How do I prevent import/export bloat?

[Septfox]

I am a n00b when it comes to modeling. I've done a fair amount of stuff in nifskope, but it's just recently that I've knuckled down and tried to actually modify things in 3ds max. Just...getting that out there.

 

Importing into 3ds, then exporting straight back out without doing anything is adding triangles to the meshes I'm working with. For example, this piece I've compared has 12,000 triangles originally, but raises to ~13,100 after being exported. Unchecking Stripify and Update Tangents and doing those manually via nifskope makes it rise further, to ~14,200 triangles.

 

The settings I generally use, they seem fairly typical to me:

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa336/septfox/nifimport.png

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa336/septfox/nifexport.png

 

Any advice? I usually only work on things here and there, then copy+paste whatever pieces I've changed into the original nif, so it's not a huge problem. It just annoys me, knowing that stuff is bloating for no apparent reason.

[greywaste]

My guess would be that it's breaking the mesh at the uv seams on import, maybe tick weld on the import gui and try that

[Septfox]

That...made matters worse. Triangles on that particular piece rose to 14,325, and the file size increased to 1,845kb (from an original size of 1,251kb; it was only increasing to 1,371kb with weld unticked).

 

Setting weld to 0 on export has no effect (well, it seemed logical to ME that if it bloated on import, it would do the same on export...)