What version of wine? I had luck with 1.5.31 using playonlinux to use separate wine versions for different apps/separate from 1.6 I installed through apt-get. Try different versions of d3dx9_XX with winetricks, and hopefully you don't have an ATI card that just doesn't seem to be able to show models.
winehq has pretty much all the different fixes to try:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=2939