Yeah, it seems that exporting and building off existing models/textures is far easier and more fail safe as opposed to building from scratch.
But yeah, I intend to keep model/texture resolution at the same quality as Native. Usually detailed textures in mods bog down my CPU as well, and it's usually not about resolution, but how well the textures are made. Native's textures are the nicest ones out there, but they aren't large textures.