I made the necessary face-morphs/shapekeys for my custom head-mesh but the game never applies them - as if there wasn't a .tri-file at all.
Both the .tri and the .nif do have the same amount of vertices. see below
I already tried all kinds of methods to export/generate said file and it's just not working.

I followed this tutorial:

Code:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74516/?tab=1&navtag=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D74516%26preview%3D&pUp=1

And I tried both methods, that is the one where you export each shape as an .obj and create the .tri with the AnimationTools' tri-creator as well as the method where one makes use of the .tri-export-script for Blender.

Regarding the latter I tried both scripts, the one for Blender 2.49 and the other one for Blender 2.7.
I also tried all kinds of locations for the head-mesh: center of the scene,  facing front when in front view ... but all to no avail.

I can't imagine that it has something to do with the lack of an .egm-file for my custom head mesh, or has it?

Edit1: Now that's weird - Blender says the mesh has 11180 vertices, according to NifSkope it has 11523. But when I re-import that mesh into Blender it has 11180 again. What's going on?!

Edit2: Apparently the different vertex count also appears with vanilla head mesh - in Blender 1184 and in NifSkope 1211.
But then again the tutorial insists on the vertex count to be the same. I'm really at a loss here.

Edit3: Read somewhere that one should open the mouth a bit. I tried it but it's still not working.

Edit4: When I export without any Material, the vertex count in Blender and NifSkope is the exact same. I tried to compensate the information loss due to the deletion of the material by pasting the necessary branches in NifSkope. That didn't work; I think I lost the UV-map (?).
But the game does play my animations! So the .tri is not the problem after all.
The sole issue is that the export of the head-mesh with material changes the number of vertices. And I have absolutely no idea why.
A user on the Nexus encountered the same problem while modding Skyrim:

Code:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/895634-exporting-from-blender-changes-vertex-number/

Unfortunately the thread doesn't mention why this happens and what can be done about it.
Anyone any ideas?

Edit5: I've posted my problem on the Niftools' forum and got the following response:

neomonkeus wrote:

Each unique material effective results in having to split out what were commonly shared vertices into a new mesh.
The nif format doesn't support sharing vertices across materials like it does in blender.

If anyone else has this problem: Exporting as .obj from a finished .nif and then importing that .obj into Blender keeps the vertex-count as shown in NifSkope.

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