Incorporating weapon models into HL2 mods question

Hi, I have just started modeling and playing around with half life 2 and have been trying to get my weapon model into the game. I use XSI as my modeling program and have used the crowbar reference model to make my model off of. After I export it and run it through the studomdl program I put it in the appropriate weapons folder in my mods folder and through the model viewer I can see that the model works. However, I have been unsuccessful in texturing it. I edit the crowbars script text to use my model as the view model but when I run the game the first person view model is not there or it is invisible. The only things I was wondering if were the reason were this not working is whether a file in the models folder with the extension .ctx needs to also be modified although I was unable to find the proper program to open it, or maybe it needs a texture to show up at all although i figured it would show up as the black/purple checkers. If anyone knows of any good sites that have tutorials or even more appropriate forums that would be really nice or if anyone knows the problem. Thanks