reenadelenyel asked:

Hi there, just a question for you if you have the time ♡ I know that you allow people to convert your Cyberpunk items from TS3 to TS4 freely (you are amazing, you know that?). However since I have the game, do you have or know of a tutorial for exporting from my files? The one I found was very general, very not ‘beginner friendly’. Else I will just bring some of your stuff over if it’s not been done yet, miss having them in my game (and base game TS4 only is limited). Love you ♡

Hi! Yeah, feel free to convert whatever; I think CC TOU/policies are ridiculous, and perversely counterproductive to uploading content publicly on the internet anyway.

Just be warned that a lot of it’s not that great, cuz C2077 uniquely does not use or include typical diffuse textures, so I had to make many of the textures myself (and that’s never a good idea, LOL). Not to mention, I had to shave off 1/2 – 3/4 of the polys on most of the meshes, cuz they’re just excessively high. Even after decimating the polys they’re still too dang high. It’s been a pain in the neck to do anything with this effing game, even when when not actually playing it! (－‸ლ)

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Welcome to Murf’s School of Crap and Crap-Making!

School Motto: Prepare to be tortured! For Science!

Lesson #6B: MORE ON GAME EXTRACTING (PT2)

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Trust me: extracting from C2077 in general is not very beginner friendly–this is the hardest game I’ve ever converted from, next to all the Koei Warriors games. Because not only did I have to use EFFING COMMAND LINES again, but the way CDPR arranged the game files (particularly the textures–or lack thereof)–were just saturated in demonic energy.

Mind you, I extracted C2077 back in the EARLY days, within the first weeks of the game’s release, way before the Toolkit updated and got a GUI and CDPR released its dev toolkits for modders, so it’s possible I’m giving you outdated information, as the process nowadays might be pretty different from how it was back when I did it.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I used the CP2077 Toolkit here, and followed the steps here.

To be fair, the steps themselves are actually very straightforward. I’m just a lazy, spoiled little ingrate who likes nice clean and simple GUI tools so i can click a button and see all the meshes & textures and go about my frikkin day. But no, instead i have to sit here with EFFING COMMAND LINES and try to figure out WTF these lines of code & text frikkin mean, with zero mesh preview tool to speak of. So I literally have no frikkin idea what anything looks like until I import it into Milkshape/Blender/3DS Max. GRAND. 🤬

(My horoscope told me I needed to get more sleep, and boy they weren’t kidding, cuz I’m ornery AF today. 😩 )

But yeah, basically all you have to do is open the CP2077 toolkit .exe, and use the format the steps provide you with whatever the directory is where you installed the game.

As I’ve explained before in Pt1, all games bundle their files differently, so the trick with extracting is just to figure out what kind of bundle it is, what’s in it, how to open it, and how to convert the mesh files into .obj format and the textures into .dds format.

For C2077, most of the files are in typical .bin files, with the meshes (.mesh files) & textures (.xbm files) in content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive | content\basegame_3_nightcity.archive |

So all you have to do is follow the steps and the formats they give you: copy/paste their extraction format code, and the “path to archive” is your installation directory: (e.g.: “archive -e -p “F:\Games\Cyberpunk2077\archive\pc\content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive” -w *.bin” to extract the .mesh files; or “archive -u –uext dds -p F:\Games\Cyberpunk2077\archive\pc\content\basegame_4_gamedata.archive -w *.bin” to extract the .dds files from the Gamedata bin archive).

Then just wait several HOURS (no exaggeration) for each archive to extract. I let mine run overnight for a a day or two–it took bloody frikkin forever.

Once you have all the meshes extracted, the good news is that converting them to .obj files The Sims can read is very easy, cuz all you have to do is use good ole NOESIS, THANK GOD~! ^0^ (Noesis can also open the .xbm texture files, BTW–it’s that clutch; I keep telling y’all.)

The issue with the textures is that C2077 just legit doesn’t have many. 💀 It’s a feature, not a bug–instead of using diffuse textures (like The Sims’ overlay/multiplier diffuse), games like C2077 and Call of Duty instead use materials–kind of like the sample fabric swatches in a textiles shop or tailor, with dozens upon dozens of simple materials & microblends & patterns (a leather print, a metallic sheen, a paisley pattern, etc) shared between all meshes. It’s awful.

So you the extractor/porter/converter are now left with the sad task of patching all these materials together to make a lick of sense on a mesh that might very well use 100 different material files (no joke!) rather than 1 or 2 diffuse textures. And WOE BE UPON YOU if you’re trying to convert it for The Sims 3, where meshes can only use textures on ONE UV Map. The saving grace of TS3′s UV Mapping is that we have CASt, so often we can get away with having plain multipliers, so long as the RGBY Mask allows us to have recolorable channels that do a lot of that heavy lifting for us with patterns & color wheels. For TS2/TS4, however, I imagine more work would need to be done providing swatches, as nothing’s recolorable in those games.

So REJOICE at the pithy handful of actual diffuse textures (mostly decals & posters, etc) that CDPR bothered to grace us with in C2077–they’re acts of mercy, I promise you. 🙏

And speaking of UV Maps–C2077′s are upside down. Which is absolutely frikkin lovely; who doesn’t love extra work, seriously. 😒

But yeah, that’s it for extracting, really.

Again, the method I used might be outdated by now, since I did all of mine in December 2020/January 2021, and I haven’t needed to stay up to date with the tools or anything since i already got what I needed out of them.