Need Help Combining Two Meshes With Nifskope

[Campaigner]

Most of the "guides" I've found were for Oblivion, and that obviously does not work for Skyrim models, or else I wouldn't be having this problem. The other guides I've found went through discussion that didn't explain a single thing properly, so they were pretty useless.

 

I'm trying to add a prop to an npc; a skull item onto a wolf. I'm aiming to make it stick to the wolf's upper jaw, as it is meant to be a mask rather than a hat or necklace. What I have done so far;

 

- Opened both NIF files in Nifskope

- On the skull, I copied the NiTriShape block

- On the wolf, I pasted the NiTriShape block into NiNode

- On the skull, I verified that it has a NiSkinInstance block that was entirely blank.

- I copied the NiSkinInstance from the wolf's NiNode "canine_spine1"

 

That's as much as I was able to do, seeing as how I don't even know how to do anything in Nifskope other than applying textures and copying data from other items over to new ones. When placing this into the creation kit through a skin, it does not crash (as no model even loads, good going faulty bethesda software!). After applying the skin to the wolf npc, trying to place it in a map yields nothing; no object is placed in the Cell View window nor the Render window. When trying again, the Creation Kit freezes until it is forcibly shut down.

 

Anyone mind helping me get this to work? I know it must be something simple that I'm missing, but this is the first time I've tried this kind of thing. I want to have this made for a friend without begging someone else to make it.