I am a babe in the woods when it comes to modeling, etc. What I want to do seems very simple, but I can't make it work.

I want to simply add a nif to another nif, to combine them into a new nif. In my case, I'm trying to add Hawk Feathers to an Iron War Axe. Why? Because tomahawk, that's why! Anyway, I followed advice from a couple forums I found talking about such things. In the Hawk Feathers nif, I clicked in the NiTriShape and chose "Copy Branch." Then I went to the Iron War Axe nif and clicked on the 0 Node, called "0BSFadeNode" and chose "Paste Branch."

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f101/iwatson/axe_mod.jpg


OK, good, the feathers show up. But as with other newbs who have tried to add nifs to another nif, the Feathers aren't visible in the game, just the same old War Axe. There was some confusing talk about possibly needing to rename the new NiTriShape that is added, but I could never ascertain as to what I might name it. The "3" it has in that pic apparently was copied from the original nif, because it was also 3 in the original.

Any suggestions?