[Tutorial] Ripping Guide for Animal Crossing New Horizons

[dany1994gus]

Guys please. when I open any model in Switch toolbox, it won't let me see the textures nor extract nor replace, it hangs or closes. Download the Directx you mentioned for that problem, but when you install it it tells me that I already have the latest update. What a way to de-update or does it work?

[Username123]

Guys please. when I open any model in Switch toolbox, it won't let me see the textures nor extract nor replace, it hangs or closes. Download the Directx you mentioned for that problem, but when you install it it tells me that I already have the latest update. What a way to de-update or does it work?

Unfortunately, I can not really help you with your problem, I can only recommend that you make sure that you have followed everything that I have already said. If that doesn't help, try toolbox on another computer, because I can only imagine that yours is based on 32 bit or only supports very old DirectX. But unfortunately, I don't have enough information to say that for sure. Also, make sure that the program is run as admin and that your anti-virus program does not cause you any problems. For me at least I only had to unpack the toolbox and I could open it without having to set anything beforehand. But reposting your problem dozens of times doesn't make it any better.

[dany1994gus]

Guys please. when I open any model in Switch toolbox, it won't let me see the textures nor extract nor replace, it hangs or closes. Download the Directx you mentioned for that problem, but when you install it it tells me that I already have the latest update. What a way to de-update or does it work?

Unfortunately, I can not really help you with your problem, I can only recommend that you make sure that you have followed everything that I have already said. If that doesn't help, try toolbox on another computer, because I can only imagine that yours is based on 32 bit or only supports very old DirectX. But unfortunately, I don't have enough information to say that for sure. Also, make sure that the program is run as admin and that your anti-virus program does not cause you any problems. For me at least I only had to unpack the toolbox and I could open it without having to set anything beforehand. But reposting your problem dozens of times doesn't make it any better.

Thank you! sorry for asking several times, as they did not answer I was very stubborn

[thezebradude1]

@dang1994gus My apologies. I didn’t know what to say in that regard, but I’m glad to see you got help.
It’s all water under the bridge, so don’t worry yourself about that. 

[Username123]

@thezebradude1 I think I figured out where to check which channel is used for what. But I not sure.

There is a small plus next to the 3D object in the Switch Toolbox. If you press it, the material folder will be displayed. Press on one of the materials it contains. And on the right side, you will see different tabs press "Shader Options". In the list that is now displayed, "material_select_roughness_channel" is included. Blathers shows the number 2 there, which I think means the green channel is responsible for the roughness. With the ironwood chair and many other pieces of furniture, the number 3 is displayed, i.e. the blue channel. I'm just not sure whether the number 0 means that the alpha channel is used or whether it simply means that no channel is intended for it. It is also worth noting that "material_roughness" is included in the Parameters tab with a corresponding value that is not always 1.

I was also wondering what exactly you do with a gray-scaled diffuse/base color map

[thezebradude1]

@thezebradude1 I think I figured out where to check which channel is used for what. But I not sure.

There is a small plus next to the 3D object in the Switch Toolbox. If you press it, the material folder will be displayed. Press on one of the materials it contains. And on the right side, you will see different tabs press "Shader Options". In the list that is now displayed, "material_select_roughness_channel" is included. Blathers shows the number 2 there, which I think means the green channel is responsible for the roughness. With the ironwood chair and many other pieces of furniture, the number 3 is displayed, i.e. the blue channel. I'm just not sure whether the number 0 means that the alpha channel is used or whether it simply means that no channel is intended for it. It is also worth noting that "material_roughness" is included in the Parameters tab with a corresponding value that is not always 1.

I was also wondering what exactly you do with a gray-scaled diffuse/base color map

Grayscaled textures are made this way to be tinted with some parameters, something like Link’s tunic on OoT on N64.

If you want to do something with them, use an art program (I use Paint.NET).
Fill a separate layer with color over the gray texture, multiply over it, and it should be tinted.

I’ll keep what you said in mind, but see if you could find a “4” corresponding to these materials.

[Fobwashed]

@thezebradude1 I think I figured out where to check which channel is used for what. But I not sure.

There is a small plus next to the 3D object in the Switch Toolbox. If you press it, the material folder will be displayed. Press on one of the materials it contains. And on the right side, you will see different tabs press "Shader Options". In the list that is now displayed, "material_select_roughness_channel" is included. Blathers shows the number 2 there, which I think means the green channel is responsible for the roughness. With the ironwood chair and many other pieces of furniture, the number 3 is displayed, i.e. the blue channel. I'm just not sure whether the number 0 means that the alpha channel is used or whether it simply means that no channel is intended for it. It is also worth noting that "material_roughness" is included in the Parameters tab with a corresponding value that is not always 1.

I was also wondering what exactly you do with a gray-scaled diffuse/base color map

I've been looking into the Shader Options output to see if I can get a better idea of what the heck the different channels and textures are used for and here's what I've got atm:

Before the actual channel (e.g. "material_select_roughness_channel") there is the same name minus the "_channel" at the end and the value for that indicates which texture file is being used.

So far it seems like the values map to the following textures:
0 = Alb
1 = Normal
2 = Mix
3 = Emissions
1000 = Not used

The channel values map to the following:
0 = A
1 = R
2 = G
3 = B

So for example, if you saw this:
material_select_occlusion = 2
material_select_occlusion_channel = 1

it would mean the red channel from the Mix texture file should be mapped to the occlusion mask.

A lot of these rules seem to be thrown out the window when it comes to the NPC and player models though because looking at the mix files, I'm pretty certain some channels are used for things like specular when they're indicated as not being used in the Shader Options. Also, there are instances where there is definitely transparency but it's not using them (look at any plant and the leaves aren't using transparency like they should be). All in all, it's kind of a mess.

[MPMOT]

I imported a NPC model and the bones are broken. When I move some bones, they sometimes move wrong body parts and sometimes they move nothing.

[Darkliger01]

I imported a NPC model and the bones are broken. When I move some bones, they sometimes move wrong body parts and sometimes they move nothing.

That means the bone hierarchy is borked, and needs rearranging.

[thezebradude1]

I imported a NPC model and the bones are broken. When I move some bones, they sometimes move wrong body parts and sometimes they move nothing.

I saw some of your attachments.
I’m not sure how the models were extracted like that.
For me, the first couple of goes, it worked perfectly.

I could give some reasons on why they probably look like that. (These are just my guesses).

1. The .nsp files are broken. 
   These worked with the extraction. I guess where, and/or how it was downloaded was at a fault here. The rip wasn’t very well done. Find another and extract from there if that’s the case.
   
2. Extraction broke files.
   During extraction, the files weren’t properly extracted due to some underlying error, or fault. Extract again. Try running in admin if you have to.
   
3. Exporting files from Switch Toolbox broke files.
   The exporting process didn’t properly convert these files. Try running admin, or redownloading Switch Toolbox.
   
4. What @Darkliger01 said.
   If the wrong parts of the models are being moved by other bones, simply renaming them in it’s vertex groups to the their respective bone names should fix them. Some bones are null for IK rig setups. (Ex. Z_tail). You can just delete those, if you want.
5. Other.
   Probably your computer interfering with this process, or some other thing I can’t really explain.
   I don’t know what to tell you at this point. Sorry.

Hope that does helps in some regard.

[Darkliger01]

Has this happened to anybody before?

Code:

C:\Users\ljans\Documents\[Section] Animal Crossing New Horizons>hactool.exe -k prod.keys --basenca="base_nca/bd68bf29c8500e9c88ca844e1a6f77e8.nca" --titlekey=44FDFC7D7F789693C24E5AA64112658E --romfsdir --exefsdir="exefs" "update_nca/4f6c17f33e8c9b3940b57a9184b2f9ee.nca"
[WARN] prod.keys does not exist.
Invalid NCA header! Are keys correct?
Unable to locate RomFS in base NCA!

[thezebradude1]

Has this happened to anybody before?

Code:

C:\Users\ljans\Documents\[Section] Animal Crossing New Horizons>hactool.exe -k prod.keys --basenca="base_nca/bd68bf29c8500e9c88ca844e1a6f77e8.nca" --titlekey=44FDFC7D7F789693C24E5AA64112658E --romfsdir --exefsdir="exefs" "update_nca/4f6c17f33e8c9b3940b57a9184b2f9ee.nca"
[WARN] prod.keys does not exist.
Invalid NCA header! Are keys correct?
Unable to locate RomFS in base NCA!

Delete “base_nca/“ and “update_nca/“?

[Username123]

Has this happened to anybody before?

Code:

C:\Users\ljans\Documents\[Section] Animal Crossing New Horizons>hactool.exe -k prod.keys --basenca="base_nca/bd68bf29c8500e9c88ca844e1a6f77e8.nca" --titlekey=44FDFC7D7F789693C24E5AA64112658E --romfsdir --exefsdir="exefs" "update_nca/4f6c17f33e8c9b3940b57a9184b2f9ee.nca"
[WARN] prod.keys does not exist.
Invalid NCA header! Are keys correct?
Unable to locate RomFS in base NCA!

Yes, that most likely means your keys are wrong. If you enter the command without existing prod.keys, the same thing happens.

[Darkliger01]

Has this happened to anybody before?

Code:

C:\Users\ljans\Documents\[Section] Animal Crossing New Horizons>hactool.exe -k prod.keys --basenca="base_nca/bd68bf29c8500e9c88ca844e1a6f77e8.nca" --titlekey=44FDFC7D7F789693C24E5AA64112658E --romfsdir --exefsdir="exefs" "update_nca/4f6c17f33e8c9b3940b57a9184b2f9ee.nca"
[WARN] prod.keys does not exist.
Invalid NCA header! Are keys correct?
Unable to locate RomFS in base NCA!

Yes, that most likely means your keys are wrong. If you enter the command without existing prod.keys, the same thing happens.

Ugh. I still don't know how to fix the "[WARN] prod.keys does not exist" issue.
Like, where on my computer does that file need to be?

EDIT: Nevermind. I just had to move prod.keys into the same folder as the hactool application.

[MPMOT]

I'm not sure what causes bones to be messed up when importing to Blender.