I am trying to make a dragon follower based off of a retextured ancient , but I can't seem to get the model to use the new texture, I know how to do it by modifying the mesh in nifskope, but the last time I checked(its been a month or two now that I think about it, should prolly check it again...) nifskope cannot edit this version of the .nif file. Have they updated it to be able to do so? or is there another way?

Second, what sort of dialoge, or other things do I need to do to enable dialoge with said dragon, and make said dragon my follower?

Just downloaded the latest version of nifskope, and it doesn't load the meshes either, so that option is out

How about just extracting the default mesh using the BSA Unpacker, then saving it in a folder like skyrim/data/meshes/actors/dragoncompanion, rename the mesh to dragoncompanion. Then put your new texture in data/textures/actors/dragoncompanion, rename it the same as the new mesh name. Then, using the CK, open up the object window, go to actors, right click and choose new, to make a new actor. Using that it should allow you to select a model, at which point it will open up your skyrim/data/meshes folder by default, select your mesh and the texture will be there.

Really no need to use the other method now that the CK is here.

I had my doubts about this method, and I was right: it didn't work. This is because the path to the texture is specified in the mesh data, so simply shuffleing folders around isn't the answer. the file name and folder name of the mesh but if the origional texture was in data/textures/actors/dragons, even if the renamed mesh is put in data/meshes/actors/dragonCompanion, it is still going to look for the texture in data/textures/actors/dragons, not data/textures/actors/dragonCompanion

You know, I think that I'm just going to make Derkeethus a dragon and wait for nifskope to be able to open skyrim .nifs before I take a crack at this again