Tribes: Ascend/File Extraction

This tutorial will go through the steps required to extract models, textures, and sounds from Tribes: Ascend.

Tools

You will need to download the Tribes: Ascend Extraction Tools. For newer versions of the tools, there are links in the ReadMe.txt to the original websites, but these will be fine.

Extracting Models

Extract umodel_win32.zip and open the Command Prompt to that folder.

We need to extract the files from two different files in order to get all of the models. Run the following commands one at a time via the Command Prompt.

umodel.exe -path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC" -export -all TribesGame
umodel.exe -path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC" -export -all TribesGameContent

There will now be two new folders where you extracted uModel, TribesGame and TribesGameContent. Inside each one, there is a SkeletalMesh3 folder, which has the majority of the models, there are a few models in StaticMesh3, but not many.

Textures are extracted to the Texture2D folder.

Extracting Textures

If you would like to extract textures that were not extracted by uModel, like the accolades, badges, ranks, etc., follow the instructions below.

Extract tribestex.zip into the C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC folder, and open the Command Prompt to that folder.

There are two ways to do this, you can extract ALL of the textures and then find the one you want, which will extract about 16 GB of textures, or you can generate a list and then extract the ones you want.

To extract all of the images, run this command:

tribestexture.exe -a

To extract a specific image, a list needs to be generated first:

tribestexture.exe -l >List.txt

Open List.txt and look for the name of the texture you want. Now we need to extract the specific texture, and set a file name for it. For this example we will use wep_spinfusor_3p.textures.t_wep_spinfusor_3p_diff, which is the diffuse texture for the third person model of the Light Spinfusor.

tribestexture.exe -e wep_spinfusor_3p.textures.t_wep_spinfusor_3p_dif -o light_spinfusor_dif.tga

This will extract the texture we want, and we will name it light_spinfusor_dif.tga. It needs to be .tga, because that's what file format they are.

Extracting Sounds

This is very similar to extracting models, but you need a different flag.

Extract umodel_win32.zip and open the Command Prompt to that folder.

We need to extract the files from two different files in order to get all of the sounds. Run the following commands one at a time via the Command Prompt.

umodel.exe -path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC" -sounds -export TribesGame
umodel.exe -path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC" -sounds -export TribesGameContent

There will now be a folder where you extracted uModel, TribesGame and TribesGameContent. Inside each one, there is a SoundNodeWave folder, which will have the sounds.

Extracting Map Data

Map data is stored in TribesGame\CookedPC\Maps\<map name> and are .fmap files. These are actually just compressed .upk files. In order to extract its contents, first rename the file extension to .upk and then use the above instructions for umodel. Note: Textures will not be exported properly due to image compression, but the map textures exist in the main texture cache and can be extracted using the method mentioned above.

umodel.exe -path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Hi-Rez Studios\games\tribes alpha\TribesGame\CookedPC\Maps\Stonehenge" -export -sounds TrCTF-Stonehenge2

Importing the Models into 3ds Max

Extract ActorXImporter.zip and open 3ds Max. The script works on 3ds Max 6 and up.

In 3ds Max, go to the MAXScript menu, and click Run Script..., and browse to where you extracted ActorXImporter.ms.

This will open a new window, where you can import models and animations.

For the materials, most of the models have multiple textures that need to be applied, you will usually have three textures per model, sometimes four, and even more if there is an ammo display. Below is a list of the textures, and how you will see them in the list you generated earlier.

Diffuse Map: _dif
Normals Map: _norm or _nrm
Specular Map: _spec or _spc
Emissive Map: _emi

References

http://gildor.org/en/projects/umodel