Pardon me for the urgency, but I really had no idea where to ask for help until I saw this forum. I tried in the Bethsoft forums, but no one seemed to care much for my questions although I asked politely and thanked in advance...

Anyway, I'm trying to merge two meshes for a personal save file (not for release or anything...just an experiment). One is the black Trench Skirt from Slof's Goth Shop, and the other one is the scabbard of the Saint LongBlade from the BlackLuster set. I basically want the scabbard to be visible on my character's waist even when the Saint LongBlade is not equipped. The problem is, I have no idea how to merge the two meshes together and have it appear in-game. I tried importing both NIFs into 3DS Max and aligning them, and then importing the product into NIFskope. It displays fine on NIFskope's renderer, however the scabbard is still not visible in the game itself.

I have no idea what to do. I see three NiTriShape blocks (UpperBody, LowerBody, LongBlade) if I group the longblade parts accordingly in 3DS Max. I was thinking I have to somehow edit the UpperBody mesh (the skirt) to include the LongBlade. But I have no idea how to merge two models into one mesh... I'd appreciate any form of help, as I'm at a loss at the moment.. Thank you so much to anyone who can help me.

It sounds like the blades need rigging to the skirt. Nifskope will show an un-rigged mesh up fine, but Oblivion won't, sometimes it will do bizarre things to the whole body.

I can only describe how I do it in Blender as I don't have Max. I would think it's a similar process though.

Once you have the scabbards aligned where you want them, make sure there is no rigging still on them (I don't think there will be, but check anyway). Also delete any pieces of skeleton as you will be importing a new one in before export.

Copy the bone weights from the skirt to the scabbard mesh - this will ensure that they move with the skirt (mostly the pelvis bone) without clipping with the body.

Once this is done, select the whole mesh, then import a new skeleton and parent it to the selected mesh. Now you should be able to export and it all show in the game.

I don't know how this works in Max, so my directions are a little vague. If you still have trouble, PM me.

Thank you so much for the reply! I sent you a PM with some questions, btw.