Having some trouble backporting some meshes/skeleton from SE, getting CTDs.

[sonicbrawler182]

I'm developing a custom race mod that I've been developing on SSE, but want to also support a LE version. A few months ago, I tested converting it quite easily through Cathedral Assets Optimizer, and converting the .esp with xEdit. However, that was before I had really set up things like FaceGen and Expression morphs, and before I followed a SSE-based guide for the recommended way to set up shaders on my nifs for SSE.

I was trying to test out the process again, and while the .esp is working (I can select the race when starting a new game), selecting the race and letting the game load the model results in a CTD before it's finished loading.

Checking the .esp in Skyrim Creation Kit (LE), I seem to be able to view the armor addons just fine, and they even look correct. But whenever I try to load the race preview or preview an actor of my race, the CK will CTD before it can load the models into the preview window.

Checking the EditorWarnings.txt generated by the CK, I get a lot of errors about the meshes "missing a rim lighting map/soft lighting map/skin sub surface map", and so on. However, I get these even when I load the armor addons, and they still load fine. So I doubt these are the issue.

However, sometimes (but not always, for some reason), I also get reports of missing bones from the body nif. I don't know how that could be the case, though it's worth noting I am using the XPMSE skeleton when developing the mod over on SSE.

I tried a few things to resolve the issue, but nothing has worked:

• Replacing the XPMSE skeleton with the XPMS skeleton.
• Various configurations within CAO, including trying Full Optimization and optimizing the textures even though they likely aren't the issue.
• Using SSE Nif Optimizer under it's LE configuration.
• Doing Head Parts separately in SSE Nif Optimizer, with the "Head Parts Only" option checked.
• Manually removing Shader Flags for things like soft lighting and rim lighting with NifSkope (this makes the corresponding errors in CK go away, but does not fix the crash when loading the an actor of my race).
• Trying a combination of Nifscan and Sniff to further batch optimize the meshes.

I'm kind of at a loss for this as it seems the common wisdom is that things like CAO and SSE Nif Optimizer should "just work". I guess I've run into some kind of edge case.