I'm trying to create an armor mash up for the first time in skyrim and it has thus far proven to be a hell of a lot harder than it was for fallout new vegas. I've created and 0 and 1 version of the armor and made sure that I have the same number of vertices. In nifskope after I redid the BsShader stuff the armor looked like it should so I added in the nif files into the meshes folder (I modified the northman armor by replacing the arms with that of the hunter armor) In game though when I equip it the armor is either completely invisible if I set my character to either the largest or smallest his weight slider can go or the armor has long black panel lines (it's like a giant paper think rectangle shooting out of the character in four directions.) Any and all help would be appreciated. I've heard it could be a weighting problem but none of the tutorials I've found even mention re weighting the armor when doing basic work. I'm also using 3ds max 2014 with the 2013 plugin by tesrenewal which I know isn't ideal but I can't legally get a pre 2014 version of 3ds max.
I also tried doing the work and blender by following Hanaisse's Creating skyrim armor tutorial and got as far as part 4 step 4 subsection 1 before becoming utterly confused. My armour that I'm working with isn't a single mesh but several meshes placed together (chest, arms, cape thing, cape thing ring, belt, you get the idea) I'm not sure if I'm supposed to repeat those steps for every piece or not.
Finally I've tried getting help on the nexus and besides one person telling me to go the beyond skyrim page for help Nobody has even commented. So I'm getting a tad desperate for help. I'm willing to learn I just can't find anyone to help me or answer basic questions about 3ds max or blender. I'm sorry if I'm asking for a lot here and I understand if what I'm looking for is a lot of work.