This is really more of a 3rd party issue (blender) and not the CS, so I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this.

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7216/screenshot0gf.jpg

The sun is on the other side of the wall, yet the dark side is receiving light.

Most likely flipped normals. I don't use Blender, but there should be an option to face/flip normals, reset x form, reset transforms or whatever it is called. Alternatively you could use the 'face normals' option in Nifskope (right click on strips, mesh>face normals).

"Alternatively you could use the 'face normals' option in Nifskope" That worked, thanks.

So should I do that to every mesh that I import?

edit: I don't know how the normals got flipped. If the normals were flipped inward in blender I wouldn't have seen the texture on the mesh. But I could see it just fine.

Sometimes normals get flipped on export. In 3ds max it happens especially when you mirror a mesh (or part of it) and don't reset transforms before export. You should generally reset transforms before export. I know there is an option to do that in Blender, just not sure how it is called.

iirc in blender there was a button that was apply transforms. I haven't used blender in a few years so it may have changed in recent versions.

Is that a single mesh, or is each post separate?.

Statics may not cast shadows, so separate posts would be rendered as if the others were not there. I don't recall if that's always true or if there's a game setting for it, but most shadows are painted in place to reduce the real-time rendering load.

though it is not relevent to this issue in this subject.
in absence of the renderer creating rt shadows, there are 3 ways I know to simulate shadow.
vertex paint.
baking AO/shadows into texture itself.
a separate shadow mesh or occulsion plane.

It's all one mesh, but there were one or two places were I had the "logs" separated. I fixed that and they all share verts where they meet.

I was intending on baking ao, but I might look into this shadow mesh/occlusion plane technique. I'm pretty new at this and I haven't heard of those techniques, ill have to check them out.

Thanks for the help.

looking at image in the first post- I would use vertex colors here. slap some darker grey/browns/blackish onto those verts where the posts meet. so right in the receases there it'll have an overlay effect the texture, and make it look shadowed.

Ok new problem.
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8011/screenshot1ng.jpg

then when i look down just a little bit, a big chunk of the mesh disappears.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7411/screenshot2g.jpg

I can open the file up in nifskope and it doesn't do this, any ideas?

Try to right-click on TriStripsData and then mesh>update center/radius. You can do this for all strips, but especially for the wood posts.

If I may suggest, I think that it would look better if the logs were not the same in size. I notice that 'cones' on the top are different, but the bark forms straight horizontal line.