Help with making working animal meshes

[Impulseman45]

Hey everyone,

I am looking for some help and or tips for making working animal meshes in 3DSMAX for Skyrim. In the past I made the new mesh for the Elk in "True Elk of Skyrim". But it didn't work and I handed it off to someone who got it working. That person did a great job, but is to busy to help any further and not really willing it seems to help teach me what it takes to make them. I know MAX pretty good and have been making static meshes for almost 2 years now. I know everyone says that you have to use MAX 2012 to make working animal meshes, But I was able to successfully make a working mesh in MAX 2014. There is a new updated set of niftools for MAX 2013 and 2014 and as I said I was able to pull it off once. But I have not been able to do it again. I seem to be following the exact same steps but I have to be missing a step somewhere. The mesh I was able to make is fully animated and works in game, but it has issues. Its a new version of the "Irish Elk" and the antlers are to close to the ears so every time the elk moves its ears it is distorting the antlers. I also noticed that the hairy mane around the neck seems not to be moving with the body. So I need some help. There are quite a few animal meshes I want to make and get into the game but I am stuck. I cant repeat what ever i did the first time. So if anyone knows of a good tutorial or how to that can step me through the process, or if someone that has the knowledge on how to do this can give me instructions I and the whole Skyrim community at large would and will appreciate it very much. I did find find a video tutorial showing how to make creatures, but it contains steps that do not apply to an animal mesh, basically the creature in the video tutorial is based on a human form and has dismember information in the mesh. As animals are not dismembered in Skyrim, but left intact so adding this code doesn't work and makes a mesh that crashes Skyrim. If I use MAX 2012 and the niftools for it I get extraneous code in the mesh that again breaks it and keeps me from adding alpha-transparency to the neck mane portion of the mesh. So you can all see I am at a bit of a loss as what to do. So I need some help, any help. I don't want to have to resort to handing the meshes off to someone else to fix. The whole point is that I want tot learn how to do this myself. 

So again any help would be great. If it sounds like I am begging than you may be right. Help.