Sorry for another newbie question, but I searched for something like this and didn't see it already answered...

I downloaded and installed (in my local Oblivion directory, not the install directory) a module that retextures the houses in Skingrad and Chorrol. It worked fine, and I'm using the premade vanilla object of one of the buildings in a mod of my own. Now, I wanted to make my mod include the retextured house, not the vanilla one. So I uninstalled the other person's mod, and copied the needed NIF from their mod's mesh directory to my own. I made sure to remove their texture and mesh directories and verified that the houses in the two cities went back to default behavior.

Then I went into the CS and created a new object from this other person's NIF. What I *expected* would happen is that I would see their mesh but with the default texture, and that I would need to use NIFscope to modify the path to the texture. But what *happened* is that I immediately saw the new texture both in the CS and in the test game.

I was under the impression that the NIF does not actually store the texture, but only a reference to it. That seemed clear from the fact that this modder's archive included a textures directory. But as far as I can tell, all I got from their mod was the mesh NIF, yet the new texture is still there.

Can someone explain what might be going on here, so I will understand the editing process better? Thanks.

You have the right of it. The CS stores the file path to the NIF, and the NIF stores the file path to the texture. This means either you didn't remove the new textures as you'd thought, or that the retexture was using stock Oblivion textures - just different ones from what was there already. In the latter case, the textures are in Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, and so you wouldn't need to package them in your mod for others to see them as well.

Many thanks for the reply info!