Hi, I have tried the Niftools forum but am not getting much traffic there.

When I create a mesh in 3dsmax by attaching many meshes together with the same material, it looks great in max. Each part of the mesh is composed of one mesh with a corresponding texture. the problem is that when I export the nif, I get a hundred separate Nitrishapes or NiTriStrips all with the same texture in my new nif.

The new nif works in Skyrim, but I don't think it's as efficient as it could be, and I have had to update the 'Num UV Sets' for over 300 NiTriStrips on some of my meshes, which is getting a little tired.

Can someone tell me how to properly export a nif from max such that each texture = 1 mesh? Or, can I somehow merge them in nifskope?

It separates by material ID, and I'm betting each portion is ending up with a different material ID.

Thanks this really helped. For those who also have this issue; I went into the Max material editor and used 'pick from object' to see all of the sub materials, then deleted all but one. Works great!