3dsmax 2017 - removing parts of a mesh

[Berit's Ashes]

Hi all, 

 

I'm a newb at this so please bear with me. I'm trying to remove parts of an armor mesh in 3dsmax. I've done this before to make armor mashups, but I've never encountered the problems I'm having. 

 

Basically, I'm just going into 3dsmax, deleting the elements I don't want, and then exporting. Usually, it gives me an "unknown error." Once, it let me export (not sure why) but the clothing appeared messed up in-game (i.e. blocky textures shooting off every which way). I'm doing it wrong, obviously, so could somebody tell me the proper procedure for removing parts of existing meshes with 3dsmax? Or, perhaps just point me to a tutorial?

 

I'm good at making mashups with nifskope, and once before I was able to remove pieces of a mesh without issue. Those were small pieces, however, and this time I'm removing a pretty sizable chunk. I suspect this has something to do with skin modifiers (something I know nothing about). Do you start to encounter problems when you remove too much?

 

Thanks in advance

[Farmthat]

If pieces of the mesh are shooting off into space, it means that your weight-painting is off. vertices aren't fully weighted to skyrim bones.

 

I've had this happen a lot lately on a mesh of mine around the hand area--this can also happen if there are too many bones influencing a vertex. The limit is 4 bone influences per vertex.

 

There's a setting under skin: advanced parameters: Bone affect limit: 20 (default.) Lower that to 4.