add a static model to a creature

[Udun]

I made a nice teleport recall spell and used marker rats - so far so good. I had the idea of making the rats look like arwelkydclusterfx01.nif. After some discussion I tried this : the (rat's) head.nif has a block NiTriStips while the arwelkydclusterfx01.nif has a block NiTriShape - actually two - one is a child of a NiBillboardNode. I deleted NiTriStips and replaced it with NiBillboardNode, a NiNode containing particles and NiTriShape (in this order). I got an error in nifscope when I pasted the particle NiNode :

""infinite recursive link construct detected 17 -> 17""
""infinite recursive link construct detected 17 -> 17""

Was working fine though, till I realized that it crashes the game when reloading a save made in a cell containing a rat - although traveling to that cell after reload - via door or my spell - works fine. Namely, when the rat is not in view, the game does not crash immediately. It crashes when approaching the rat - however if I reload in the rat's cell but with the ratie out of view and then teleport to the rat no crash. No crash again if I enter the cell from a door from an adjacent cell. ???
Maybe it's an anim problem - I need a valid idle anim that does nothing.
Actually I am very close - I even disabled havoc (not related to the crashes), and I was admiring my nice teleport markers ingame, till those strange CTDs manifested.
Help :poorme:

PS searching in the net I realized that a couple of nifskope gurus reside in this forum