Skylanders: Swap Force (*.pak)

[Doctor Loboto]

Yeah, not much research has gone into this series at all because people think it will lead to hacking characters into the game or some nonsense. I personally just want models and textures, and don't have the means to mod anything back into the game, nor do I have interest in doing so.

My problem is everything is in these 'pak' files and I cannot figure out which has models or texture data. I'm worried they all just contain sound data due to the 'bank' in the file names, which really annoys me.
I'm hoping someone here can help me figure out this file system so I can extract models of Kaos for a project of mine.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ia80un0efx398r/Kaos.zip?dl=0

[id-daemon]

One of the files actually contains models and textures. The format is similar to Marvel Ultimate Alliance, so its possible to extract models, but I never had any experience with console textures.

[aluigi]

Script 0.2.1:
http://aluigi.org/bms/marvel_ultimate_alliance_2.bms

[id-daemon]

ok i modified the script to unpack this game (xbox version)

The problem was that ZSIZE was little endian, and some blocks were NOT compressed and just stored as full 0x8000 blocks.

Now I have something here in the file level.bld: models with UV's, and textures may be here too

[id-daemon]

new script so you can already unpack the files and start looking for textures yourself

[id-daemon]

no names here. Who is it?

[Doctor Loboto]

That would be Kaos' 'talking head' form. It's a holographic proojection.

The first thing you posted is clearly part of normal Kaos' robe.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9oztageg82vu039/Kaos-01.png?dl=0
This is the normal form of Kaos.

[id-daemon]

ok i will check other 15 meshes. I think it will take too much time to find their names, better check them all.

[Doctor Loboto]

Looking forward to it. Any luck with textures?

[id-daemon]

I can't make models and textures at the same time. Textures are in the same file, you can check them yourself

[Doctor Loboto]

Understandable, but uh, I'm not sure how to go about doing that...anyway, take your time. I can wait.

[id-daemon]

that must be him. 3 meshes here: head, hands and robe back.



thats all for today

[Doctor Loboto]

Yes, that would be him, just add it to the first thing you found and it should work, though he seems to be missing his eyes... Now all we need are the textures. I only have two other model sets I'd like to extract, if you happen to have time for them.

These are the first's files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl9puvcpti6b2k0/GoldenQueen.zip?dl=0
She looks like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zg5170cpzenh61j/Golden_Queen.jpg?dl=0

These are the second's files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lzmtlbb0oasu41r/Luminous.zip?dl=0
He looks like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/82ei2gjpfw2ltab/Lumnious.jpg?dl=0

Also, for completions sake, this pack here is fairly important, as it includes Kaos' updated look from Superchargers. From what I can tell the format is the same as Swap Force and Trap Team. If you don't feel like doing those other two right away, I'd appreciate this one more than them. I really want to get Kaos looking his best.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh7k4umuc73tn2g/NewKaos.zip?dl=0

[id-daemon]

When did you update the message? You know, the forum doesn't show thread updated when you do it this way. I just found his eyes, and now you're saying you don't need it anymore, and you better want this updated Kaos look?

[Doctor Loboto]

Oh no, that's not it at all. I'd like both Kaos looks if at all possible. These are my top four projects, I have two others but I don't want to ask too much of someone who's so graciously helping me out already. Even though I have no other alternative, I'm still appreciative of the fact you're going out of your way to pull these together for me. Sorry for the confusion.

[id-daemon]

I'm doing this because I never extracted models from consoles, and I like to know how it's done just in case. Also, that would be very good if you can learn using hex2obj yourself, for your next projects, and even better, to teach others later.

[Doctor Loboto]

I've tried, honestly, and with even the most simplistic tutorial on the topic I still fail to get models out of anything. If you like, I could give you some form of payment for doing these, as I really appreciate the help as it is and I really feel I should help you out in return somehow.

Also, before I forget, this is an example of 'New Kaos'.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x45tm3ooz19accv/NewKaos.png?dl=0

[id-daemon]

No, I don't need payments. And the tutorials on hex2obj are all hard to understand. Even I, an experienced reverse engineer, when I need to use it (and its rare, maybe once some months), I need to memember again all these strange non-self-explaining abbreviations, and there's even no simple help, where they are all named! At least I can't find one.

Meanwhile, here are all 6 meshes combined. He even had legs inside, I moved them down.

[id-daemon]

But without textures, it will be not much of use. So we better get to textures now. Do you have any ideas how can we get them? You had some plan.

[Doctor Loboto]

Well the only methods I really know of that work are looking at the files with TextureFinder, or fiddling around with them in TiledGGD. Problem is, even when these files are extracted I have no idea which ones would be the textures, as they all come out as '.dat' files.