Editing Meshes in Blender Screwing up Normals? Help!

[HeirOfTheSeptims]

So I'm working on some new weapons that use modified Vanilla assets. For some reason when I get the items in game they are all shiny and look smooth. All areas that should look raised because of the normal maps are just wiped out.

Here are some pictures:

 

New item:

 

Original Item:

 

As you can see, the modified mesh is all kinds of screwed up. It is using the exact same textures (normals and all) as the original item.

 

 

My process for modifying meshes is:

• Open .nif with Nifskope
• Delete all items but the required mesh
• Make changes necessary for import to blender
• Save file
• Open Blender
• Import .nif
• Add a material to the mesh
• Select "UV"
• Select "Image"
• Select any random texture image
• Make changes to mesh (may include cutting, dupicating, merging vertices, bending, deleting, etc)
• Export the mesh as a .nif
• Open the mesh in Nifskope
• Undo changes for blender compatability
• Delete everything but the mesh/meshes
• Triangulate the meshes
• Copy and paste the original BSshader property into the file and assign them to the trishape
• Next I usually copy and paste the finished trishapes into a different .nif file (like an existing weapon)

 

Sometimes this results in the above issue, but not every time. I'm not sure if it is the normal mapping somehow getting screwed up or if its an issue with the actual mesh itself. Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this and/or how I can fix it? Its extremely annoying to put so much work into a mesh only to have it be messed up once it gets in game. :sad:

Edited September 6, 2017 by HeirOfTheSeptems