I was testing some Skyrim animations in 3ds max by importing the .KF files (the animations), for various animations. But I don't know how to test an animation...fix the skinning errors, then go back to the default "pose" for proper exporting. Is there any way I can do this?

Like for example, if I'm testing a horse "graze" animation, and making sure that the bridle attached to the horse isn't deforming in a weird way. I can import the KF file for the horse graze animation, and it works, and shows me the errors. I can fix those. But afterwards, if I need to export the nif I need to go back to the default static pose the horse starts with, and I'm not sure how to go back to that state.

Can anyone help?

You can either Set a "Bind Pose" -> Alt Right Click -> Set As Skin/Bind Pose.

Or

You can set up a Reaction through the Reaction Manager that just tells the bones to reset to a Bind Pose, though for your purpose this would be going way out of bounds as the RM is fairly complex as it allows you to create Secondary Animated Reactions to Primary Animations and Min/Max Limit the Reactions and blah blah its very useful for animators not so much if your not.

Or

You can DL one of the Many(As In there are literally hundreds if not thousands of available) Animator Tools Plugins for Max that has Posing Options.

Or

You can set up some Attribute Holders linked to every node resetting them into a bind pose, also not really needed unless your an going to try your hand at real animating and not just import beth animations and slightly alter for re-export.

Hey Saiden thanks for the reply. When I'm doing the Set Skin pose, should I be right clicking anything in particular? The skeleton bones? Or just the mesh that's skinned?|

Edit: Also, how do I load the static pose?

Everything you have selected is what will gets its Skin Pose set to its current position/rotation/scale.

To Set nodes back to their skin pose you do the same thing alt right click -> then assume skin pose (only the current selection of nodes will get reset).