I'm having a little trouble trying to get a mesh in game. It's not a mesh I made from scratch, it's an edited Skyrim mesh.

When I set the BSDismemebermentSkinInstance to 32 (Body) and the CK to equip it to the same slot, it crashes.

Now to be fair, I don't actually WANT to equip it to the body slot, I'd rather equip it to slot 47.

The thing is, though, if I change the BSDismemebermentSkinInstance to 47 and do the same in the CK, the mesh actually shows up, but doesn't move with the skeleton, it just floats in place. No change in shape with animations or even the direction the character is facing.
But leaving the BSDismemebermentSkinInstance at 32 and changing the CK to 47 means no mesh is visible at all (which makes sense, I guess).

Now, this is the first time I've done something like this, so I'm sure I've just made some kind of an error somewhere. My question is does anybody have an idea of what could be wrong?

I can upload the .nif or give any more information if needed, I'm just not sure what you guys need to know.

I still haven't managed to figure it out yet, can anyone shed some light?

when you export it into nifskope (assuming that's what you do) DON'T select vertex colour. see if that works

See if you can contact Brumbek. He's doing the improved static meshes mod and I'm sure he has more answers than most for dealing with meshes.

I had a look to see if that was my problem (it took so long because I forgot to save a .blend file, so I had to redo the mesh) but I couldn't find "vertex colour" on the import OR export menus. I'm not sure if I'm blind or if it's hidden somwhere else. I'm pretty new to Blender and I get lost easy. Photoshop has always been my comfort zone, the actual meshes have always intimidated me.

ahhhh, you want to use 3Ds max, blender is JUST the mesh, 3D max gets the skeleton etc. this was the problem i had. I use blender for the model and 3D max for everything else now.

According to the tutorial I was following, Blender CAN handle the skeleton. I was also under the impression that most TES modders use Blender for their meshes.

I could be wrong, though. I was also under the impression that such a simple mesh edit would be easy.