A Tutorial from Team Equity
You can download the latest version of Equity here:
This Tutorial will show you how to build a Static Actor for use in
Reality Factory from a model made in 3ds format and replace a faulty
texture.
You will need Equity v502 or later.
Open Equity and navigate to Import Autodesk (3ds) -> Autodesk .3ds and load your 3ds file

Being a complete noob I made a mess of the texture.
Never mind I'll do a new texture and change it.
Go back to Equity, navigate to replace texture and select your newly
saved image. What an idiot I saved it as a jpg file it's a good job equity will deal
with that.

Ah thats better. Give the material a new name and click ok.

All I need to do now is Save Actor As

Job done. I can use this as a prop or Attribute in RF now.