That didn't seem to work, no matter where I put it. My textures are currently embedded into the .FBX files exported from 3ds max, though eventually I'd like to have the textures be coupled to the models in the code so that I can use the same texture on different models to save on memory. I'm sure it's apparent by now that ...

I also am having a little confusion with alphas. I'm placing simple 3D geometry in the world and moving it around. I don't have any screen HUD things, yet I still need to do a spriteBatch.Begin() and End() in order for my 3D objects' alpha to work. I have nothing between the Begin() and End(), yet it still seems to do make the alphas ...