Unreal Mesh importing help. UE4.27

[Kreiyu]

So i've figured out how to mod Smalland, and even started a Nexus page for it. 

Because of that, there is no modding community for this game, and i'm hoping someone can help. I can't seem to import a skeletal mesh into the game to replace armor or creatures. weapons are static meshes, and i was able to make a weapon replacement without issue. 

my first skeletal mesh replacement was to swap the regular hornet with the games armored hornets, but the textures look blurry and the entire movement of the creature seems fuzzy.  the main difference i can see between the two is that the regular hornet has 4 levels of detail, while the armored hornet only has one. the only reason i can think of why there is this difference is i can tame and ride the regular hornet, and not the armored one. so i kind of think it all has to do with the mesh lods, but i'm also not sure. 

my second attempt is an armor replacement. i'm not even sure what happened, but it looks messed up, lol. like the mesh of the armor replacement all got squished to where the skeleton. so it looks like a think stick figure. the reason i'm not sure if it is an issue with lods, is because the armor i'm replacing only used one lod. even tried importing the base model of the armor i was replacing back into the game, and it still looked wonky. and both the armor and the hornet are having different issues. the armored hornet looks like and armored hornet, it's just blurry mesh and texture. the armor is completely deformed into something else. My twiggy self, and blurry, unfocused hornet.

 

 

it's a shot in the dark, but i'm just hoping someone has encountered these kind of issues in UE modding. i wonder if it will be like Grounded, where i need a specific packer for static meshes.