http://i.imgur.com/lPRJ6.jpg

"Something" happens to the lip of the eye in 3ds when you apply MeshSmooth (even on default iterations) and I can see it happening but I don't know how to do anything about it. It looks like this ^ in game. What is this, and how do I stop it? Otherwise mesh smooth modifier makes this head look great at the cost of 3x the polygons, which I don't mind.

The smoothing has moved the vertex normals around the eye socket so that it picks up lighting from behind. Mark the edge rings around the eye as creases before you use a smoothing modifier, then it won't modify those edges and the normals should stay as before. You could manually rotate the vertex normals to point forward too (aka bent normals).

Typically people paint in a darker shade on the texture right there to simulate the natural shadowing of the head (aka ambient occlusion).

*scribble scribble*

Ok, got it, thanks. (This is going to be a disaster, rofl)

I don't recommend using meshsmooth on any meshes that have morph animations, you could end up with a stiff mask instead of a face ingame. I'd be interested if facial animations do still work ingame after mesh was smoothed. In Blender you even get a straight error message, when trying to smooth any mesh that has morphs.

Oh, damn. I didn't think of that. :/ I ask this as someone who's played Morrowind about 500x less extensively than modded it.. any real quick way to make my character do facial animations so I can test it?

Just check ingame if eyes still blink and mouth opens/shuts. Or else open the corresponding head.nif in nifskope and press the play button on top of screen.

Oh yeah, that stuff happens. It's really minor mesh smoothing. The real problem I'm having is the stuff that Hrnchamd said I have NO idea how to do. I'm going to have to try to find it and probably not succeed. :/ Which really svcks because the smoother head mesh makes the new faces REALLY look awesome.

A morph is like a freeze of a certain facial expression and the animation makes those single expressions fluidly morph into eachother. If you do changes to the geometry like the eye, you will have to do exactly the same to every single of those morphs. There are 3 in a MW head. If the positions of the verts differ, it will look like the eyelid was made of bubble gum.

Actually, you can smooth a mesh with morphs just fine in Blender. Is max's 'meshsmooth' = blender's 'smooth' or subsurf?

It's subsurf and you can't do that in Blender. Once you try to apply the modifier, you get an error message. Might be a Blender only issue though.