Trouble getting a model from Max into Skyrim SE

[LoonyMods]

Hello! I've been struggling for a few hours trying to get a model put together in Max over to Special Edition (and work). The end goal is to replace the vanilla statues in the game with custom ones - so no animations or skeletons, just a simple stationary 3D model. When in Max, it looks fine, and when I open it up in Nifskope it also actually looks just fine. But when I put it in data\meshes\clutter\statues\ with the same name as the original it's replacing and boot up Skyrim to check, half of it is missing and the half that's there has no texture. The model has two parts in Max - the body/hands/head which were all combined from separate meshes into one, and the base decoration of the statue - and when opened up in Nifskope all three body parts show up as separate shapes and the base decoration brings it up to a round four shapes (in addition to the collision mesh which seems to work fine). But all the parts show up with correct textures. Simply copying/pasting the .nif file over to the correct game data folder seems to break it. I attached an image to show what I mean. Is this a common issue, or more of a "first-time modder" issue?

 

[crazylion]

Hi

The exporting to nif will split the model into parts according to its Material(texture) association not how you join the mesh inside max. Check the nif-file that all textures path are correct and point all to the game folder texture/ as in the nif file the textures can be in any folder to show up properly but in the game that would not work - and I guess that is your issue.

 

CL

[LoonyMods]

Thanks, I solved the issue myself by going back through the Max file and tinkering in Nifskope. The base I actually had forgotten to collapse into an editable mesh, and I went through the materials and corrected some issues with shaders and light levels and the like. Also, as far as the parts showing up, it was due to some parts being flagged "Model_Space_Normals" in their BSLightingShaderProperty and some not (the ones not flagged that not showing up and vice versa).