Help with ripping textures from GC games

[ddrmaxman]

I'm more or less new to this and I really want to learn to rip Textures and 3D models from a couple of Gamecube games for fun and for some 3D animations I am working on.

Currently I am trying to get the textures for the environments and individual objects from an old Gamecube game called "Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg".

Can someone teach me about the .ARC files? how about all the other stuff for other games too? I'd also like to contribute stuff here too. . .

[Shadowth117]

The only way you're going to be ripping textures from that game if they aren't the GVM ones on the PC version if you can't find an .ARC extractor is by using 3D Ripper DX to dump textures or Dolphin itself to dump them. Regardless, you'll have to sort through whatever you dump to find what you want and it very likely will be a very lengthy and tedious process.

[ddrmaxman]

The only way you're going to be ripping textures from that game if they aren't the GVM ones on the PC version if you can't find an .ARC extractor is by using 3D Ripper DX to dump textures or Dolphin itself to dump them. Regardless, you'll have to sort through whatever you dump to find what you want and it very likely will be a very lengthy and tedious process.

I have been working with 3D modeling and stuff so far. . . I guess I'd be willing to invest the needed time. Can you offer a through tutorial? I was thinking of contributing stuff from a ton of other GC games too.

[Shadowth117]

Its not like its complicated, really just tedious since you have to go and pick out each individual texture. You'll probably want to dump directly from Dolphin since its more reliable.

Keep in mind though anyway you do this you'll have to have a decent computer since you'll have to play through the level you want to rip textures from in its entirety to make sure that every texture gets loaded and subsequently dumped. You'll also probably need a few GB of space on your HDD since you're dumping every texture that's loaded into the games memory, which is a lot as you might guess. The only big thing you want to watch out for are FMV's since Dolphin will try and dump every frame from them, wasting space and making things harder for you. To avoid that, you simply have to skip them.

To get this set up, all you'll have to do is go into your Graphics plugin settings in Dolphin, go to the advanced tab, and enable "Dump Textures". After that just play the game and they'll dump in .TGA format unless they've since changed it. Just make sure everything you can find in the level comes onscreen at least once so you can be sure to get the most complete rip possible. To find your textures after you've dumped them, just go to your Dolphin folder and then into \User\Dunp\Textures. From here, you'll find games sorted by their internal GameID. Obviously if you only ripped from one game it will be the only one here, but if you ever want to find that ID its rather simple. You just right click a game in Dolphin's Game List in the main window, select properties and then go to the info tab. The ID should be listed under, as you'd expect, Game ID.

Once you've dumped everything, you'll have to sort through by hand to find the textures you want and pick them out. I think its easier to delete old dumps and then make new ones so its easier to sort through, but its your choice really. And that's about it not much else to say here.

[ddrmaxman]

Actually, I got my laptop to run Dolphin at last. it's surprisingly a comfotable way to get the textures since I can speed run games unusually fast. lol

thanks for your help!

[gabrielwoj]

Arc files dude?
Hey, you want to send those arc files to me them I can try extract...
I have 3 programs to extract those...

[Shadowth117]

Its probably not the kind you're thinking of. There's a number of different variants of .arc files that have been created for different games. Its not any of the ones I'm familiar with at least. I'm pretty sure its a Sega variant of it if it helps since I tested the Gamecube and Wii versions on it, but I can't say it helps just knowing that.

[ddrmaxman]

Thanks Shadowth117, I'm now able to move along further on my animation project!