Need some help with 3DS Max and Nif import/export

[Sigourn]

TL;DR need proper import/export settings for 3DS Max 2016 with Nif files.

 

For a while already I use Nifskope whenever I need to remove a certain part from a mesh, or copy and paste branches from one mesh to another. For instance, to add underwear/modify underwear. This is really nearly all I use it for, as well as to make underwear variations in T6M (e.g. the Merc Charmer, which originally had white lingerie, now has three variations: no underwear, white lingerie, and black lingerie).

 

I decided to expand the things I can do with 3DS Max 2016, since I'm somewhat used to it compared to Blender (which I'm completely new at, and feels unintuitive). With 3DS Max I'm able to delete polygons and move vertices around, which helps add more underwear meshes and edit them to prevent clipping.

 

But I've run into an issue: no matter how hard I try, my armors (perfectly visible and NifSkope and perfectly playable in New Vegas) turn invisible after I export them out of 3DS Max. This happens even if I don't edit the armor at all, so it's clear something is going on in between.

 

So basically my doubt is whether there are some magic import/export settings I should use in 3DS Max, or there is something else I'm missing. If someone could help me out, I would very much appreciate it! What should be a rather simple task (I mean, deleting polygons takes me less than 2 minutes) is becoming annoying fairly quickly. I've searched the Nexus for answers but found absolutely nothing, same in LoversLab.