This is not a WIPz per se, because I don't really intend to release this as a mod, at least not yet, but I wanted to know what you think about this and maybe you can help me to complete it. Since there are high res texture replacers for everything and improved meshes for a lot of stuff, those meshes that have not yet been remade or improved stand out in particular. Especially the vanilla creature models look quite bad today, and not for all of them exist good mesh replacers. So I tried to improve those I could not find good replacers for at least a little bit and used the subsurf/subdivide smooth functions of blender to reduce the blockiness of the creature models. In most cases, the results were quite good and the look of the meshes has really improved. I have made smoothed versions of a total of 11 creatures: Ash Ghoul, Ash Slave, Ash Vampire (became obsolete with the release of http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/42832/?), Ash Zombie, Bonewalker, Corprus Stalker (Better use Westly's replacer, but the result is still not bad), Greater Bonewalker, Hunger (only the body), Lame Corprus, Nix Hound (looks still quite terrible, but not as awful as before), Skeleton.

Some other creatures would not import or export properly in Blender, so I could not edit them: Ancestor Ghost, Ascended Sleeper, the Atronachs, the Slaughterfishes, Bonelord, Clannfear, Dreugh (still testing), Scamp

Some other creatures I have begun editing but haven't finished yet: Mudcrab, Scrib

I also have not really attempted to edit the add-on creatures, except the Durzog.

I was unable to change creatures which have animations in their xnif files, like the Slaughterfishes, or particle effects, and for some reason the Clannfear lost all its animation after exporting from Blender. Maybe someone knows what could be done about these problems. Maybe it is possible to export them after editing and copy-pasting only the NiTrishapes back into the original xnif files, although I still don't know how to smooth meshes with shape keys like the Slaughterfish heads. To be honest, for the most part I did not even know what I was doing, but on the creatures listed above it worked and I have played with the edited meshes long enough now to talk about them here. Maybe some day there will be improved versions of all creatures. Of course, it would be much better if all of them would be completely remodeled, as has happened already with some of them. But my skills are still insufficient for a task like this.

If someone is interested in the edited meshes, I can provide a zip file with the creatures I have done so far. Here are some pictures of the edited meshes in the Construction Set:

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k19/Pherim/Morrowind-Screenshots/smooth_creatures1.png~original

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k19/Pherim/Morrowind-Screenshots/smooth_creatures2.png~original

I recently encountered a similar issue (2 days ago actually). I wanted to edit the Daedroth model to make a fat version, but the head gets all screwy upon import and then worse on export. It uses morphs for its head animation.

I'd be interested in taking a peek at the models you smoothed, Pherim.

Oh smoothed creatures! They look great. I've always been bothered by the vanilla meshes, which are really blocky.

I hope you'll be able to solve the issues, cause I really would like to see these in-game

The creatures you see on the images can be used ingame without any problems, and their appearance ingame is much improved over the vanilla meshes.

Here they are in a zipped file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7_TtEsbmE7kMjRqWFRIVnhTeVE/edit?usp=sharing

I have included the Dreugh, which should work now. Just extract them to meshes/r.

But you do know, that simply subdividing the model is the worst possible solution to the blockiness? One should add loop cuts in the places where it is necessary. Subsurfing/subdividing just adds loads of unwanted geometry which affects performance.

I know, and that is why I don't intend to release them as a proper mod... I am not very proficient with Blender (always wanted to change that, but I haven't gotten around to do it, yet) and this was just the thing I was able to do, and the results were satisfying. That's why I post this here, now, because I also want to know how to achieve the same or better results in a more efficient way. Besides, some meshes from the "Detailed and reflective Armor" mods just have so ridiculously many polygons, that these smoothed creatures really are harmless in comparison. I do realize, however, that they are by far not perfect, but they can be used ingame without any problems as it seems and they don't have a noticeable impact on performance for me.