can someone...

Convert this model to a format that can be used in alice or link me to a place that has a bunch of mech models?
http://www.dram.org/rd/rdmodels.html
Theres the link, the kind of uploader this site (umong others) doesn't seem to like me

I looked at the obvious contenders - biturn, MilkShape, etc. - and no luck. You might try a more detailed search in the Blender documentation or just do a web search. You need to get from the .rds format to .obj or .3ds - then you'll have several options.

Too bad - the pictures of the models did look nice. If you do find a way, please post it.

Well looking around it seems like its a file format specificlly for Ray Dream Studio 5 so unless someone around here has already paid for it then I guess that idea is shot. So I guess the next question is where is a good site for 3-d models? Paricularly if they have robotic/mech models.

edit: what about .max files? Found
http://www.3dm3.com/modelsbank/model385.htm
but I am wary of just trying different programs without knowing if they'll help convert the 3d files.

edit2: Found a .3ds file of a few different downloads and one gave me an error (this is after I converted using biturn) and the other had no texture (in the pic it appeared to have a texture but not altogether sure). Can you tell me about the whole converting deal or link me to a topic that has the info?

Try looking in the share objects section of the forum. Importing models into Alice is really a pretty iffy thing - it was not designed for that, but just as a teaching tool for OOP.

If you have a problem importing something, don't give up right away. Some of the Alice "errors" are just warnings and others are simple naming problems that can be fixed with a text editor.

Having said that, my personal estimate is that less than a third of the models available on the web can actually be imported successfully - and less than that are actually useful. 3D models, by their nature, are very complex and tend to be tool dependent.