A problem with cracking meshes for no clear reason?

[Wolflady500]

Okay, so I hope I am not just being lame, but I don't think I am....

So the issue is, I'm trying to make my own recolored wolf, easy, should be anyway, I done it before fine with other things and in other games like FONV, but now there seems to be one problem I keep running into numerous times with textures that are not even of my making, so I know it's not that.

Problem is once I rename a new mesh to be separate of the original and link it to the texture in NifSkope, making sure the paths start with the folder Textures, it comes up In-Game and in the CS as all cracked and broken up, not missing mind you, but like glass broken up in pieces but close together enough that you can tell what it is.

Now for two reasons I know why it's not the texture or how I edited it in GIMP

#1 If I replace, say the original wolf texture with mine, it looks more or less okay (Mesh is a tiny bit different from the custom mesh I'm using, but that's normal) There's no purple, there's no weird cracks, nothing.

#2 I used a texture made by someone else for a creature, using as replacer works fine, rename the exact same mesh and link the texture to it and it's all messed up.

Has anyone ran into this before? Is it because I am using a newer version of nifskope? Am I doing something wrong?

 

Picture on the left is when I replace a existing texture of a similar working creature, the Dhole, on the right is what happens when I copy that same mesh, rename it and link the new texture to it with Nifskope.

[Elbethien]

I know this problem when a normal map is missing on creatures. The file texturename_n.dds

[Wolflady500]

Ahhh thank you! I just copied the dhole_n and renamed it the same as the recolored texture, but with the _n and now it works, thank you that was driving me nuts.