[TUTORIAL] Halo Master Chief Collection model extracting (Halo MCC not required!)

[Keltoi]

Hi I will be sharing how to rip just about any model/map (and even some sound files) from the Halo games! I will try to put it into steps to make it somewhat easy to follow. 

First things first, if you have questions or requests for me, you can reach me at my Discord where there are more guides like animation extraction, 1:1 Halo map porting to blender and Halo Infinite extraction:

[Halo Archive Discord Link]
discord.gg/haloarchive

The discord is full of very talented people who can help with getting just about any model you could ever need.
So far the group can help you get assets from Halo CE, 2, 3, ODST, Reach, 4, 5, and Halo Wars 1 / 2 and Infinite.

Most of the top Halo YouTubers, Artists, cosplayers, modders, and even some old Bungie / 343 employees are there. It is the largest Halo Creative art community on the internet and has lots to dive into so come check The Halo Archive out if you have some time.

TLDR: Here is a YouTube tutorial I made so you don't have to read this long tutorial:
https://youtu.be/aYnVWsOZHlE

[Halo Infinite Ripping Guide]
https://youtu.be/AOStYxiDLis

[Halo 5: Forge Ripping Guide]
https://youtu.be/i6qYS2EBuy4

[Halo Wars 2 Ripping Guide]
https://youtu.be/wYqUsnkrhTY

[Super Basic Guide on making your own Infinite Spartan in Blender] (beginner friendly)
https://youtu.be/y_lRfuCg1NA




I hope this tutorial is helpful to you!

Install Reclaimer
First things first you will need the program Reclaimer, made by Gravemind from this link here: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm?page...icID=51331

Make sure you install Reclaimer to a folder on your desktop or on an external device like a HDD, or else your computer might have issues accessing the Halo .map file data and the settings file.

Make sure you read the instructions on the page carefully, as Gravemind has laid out what you will need to get it working and explains the formats it currently allows for! (currently supports .dae, .obj., .obj w/ .mtl, .amf, and .jms model filetypes as well as .png, .tif, and .dds bitmap texture filetypes).

Once it is downloaded and installed, open the program and go to settings and change the default extraction file type. It will default to .amf format, but you will want to change it to obj or dae (depending on your preference). The bitmap default file type will be tif, but you can change it to png if you want. 

Once you have decided what format you want your bitmaps in (.png, .tif, or otherwise) go to Tools -> Settings and where it says "Batch Extractor" click that and change it to the "Model Viewer" setting panel. Here you will see a setting called "MaterialExtension" which defaults to "tif". If you are wanting your bitmaps in .tif format then leave it unchanged, but if you are wanting .png bitmaps then just change it to "png" instead. This will ensure that the .mtl files generated by extracting models in .obj format will point to the correct format, making it easier on you if you are using a 3D modeling program like Blender.

Before you close out your settings tab it is VERY IMPORTANT to ensure your "FolderMode" is set to "Hierarchy". This is in the "Batch Extractor" panel. Not doing so will for some reason cause your extracted textures to replace each other every time they are extracted and leave you with only one texture file at the end of the extraction (as of 12/13/2020 this is a bug, but Gravemind is working to fix it).

Get .map files
Now that your settings are all set, you will need some maps!
Halo Master Chief Collection hides it's map files in certain locations in it's install directory. 

Note Certain .map files from the PC MCC won't work for some reason, most likely due to the porting process from 343. The ones that won't work are: Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 4. To get access to these .map files you will need the original Xbox .map files which I will provide below!

Note 2 I have gotten feedback from some users saying the Halo CE .map files they try to open look corrupted. This may be due to getting your .map files from various sources online and they could have gotten messed up somewhere along the way. The Google Drive link below will have fresh .map files from my personal Halo CE on my computer so those should all work perfect!

The directory for the .map files (in case you want to find them) are as follows:

Halo CE      ->(install directory)\halo1\original\build\maps 
Halo 2         ->(install directory)\halo2\h2_maps_win64_dx11 
Halo 3         ->(install directory)\halo3\maps 
Halo ODST ->(install directory)\halo3odst\maps 
Halo Reach ->(install directory)\haloreach\maps 
Halo 4        ->(install directory)\halo4\maps

Now if you don't have the Halo Master Chief Collection, then that is okay! I will provide you some links to the .map files

Google Drive
This link will be a Google Drive that I have gone through the trouble of grabbing all (working) CE .map files for you that work for Reclaimer in the correct file structure: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sp=sharing

Extra Link to original Xbox .map files
If for some reason my Google Drive gets taken down, or I stop paying for the additional storage, here is a link to all .map files from the Xbox and Xbox 360 discs themselves: https://haloce3.com/xmf/


NOTE: When you use .map files be aware that some models may have issues opening up or be grossly mistextured in the Reclaimer Model Viewer and will not extract, namely vehicles and character models. Gravemind explained to me that this is because the "Shared" files need to be in the same directory as the other .map files for that game. Once they are in the same directory it should work perfectly!

If you have any questions of what files are mandatory for a certain game I will write them below!

MANDATORY FILES (make sure these files are in your directory before using Relcaimer for the specified game)
Halo CE: ui.map, sounds.map, bitmaps.map
Halo 2:  mainmenu.map, shared.map, single_player_shared.map
Halo 3:  mainmenu.map, shared.map, campaign.map, bink.map, images.map
Halo 3 ODST: mainmenu.map, shared.map, campaign.map
Halo Reach: mainmenu.map, shared.map, campaign.map
Halo 4:  mainmenu.map, shared.map, campaign.map

The above files will be found inside the google drive link here inside their respective folders: 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sp=sharing

Your directory should look exactly like the Google Drive folders do for each game!


Now that Reclaimer is installed, settings how you want them, and you now have some .map files to play with... Open up Reclaimer (if it isn't already) and go to File -> Open Map in the top left.

Your .map file will open and you will see a ton of folders on the left side of the screen. There are two main folders to focus on depending on what you are looking for...

MODELS
If you are interested in extracting models from Halo Custom Edition find the folder named "gbxmodel" and if you are doing it for any of the other Halo games find the folder named "render_model". Once expanded you will see all sorts of files. These are ALL of the models for that given .map file. Have fun finding what you are looking for! But heed these notes below....

IMPORTANT! Every time you open a .map file from a new Halo game you will need to Right Click on a file and select "Open With". Here you NEED to select "Model Viewer" and click the button that says "Set as Default". If you don't do this then your model will not open up and you can't extract it or it's textures!

Note 2 Certain models may not open in the model viewer, or may look weird with bright yellow colors instead of their real textures until you open the correct .map file. For instance I had trouble opening up the Banshee model on Halo Reach, until I tried it on different .map files and eventually it worked!

Note 3 Sometimes you might click on a model file and the model viewer will open up, but you won't see anything displayed. This tends to happen because a model is small, or is a flat texture you can't see very well. To fix this in most cases you just have to click and drag your mouse on the blue space in the model viewer and that should refresh the Model Viewer and your model will show up (90% of the time).

MAPS
If you are interested in extracting the level geometry from the .map files find the folder "scenario_structure_bsp". Once expanded you will see a file (or files in some cases like Halo Reach and Halo 4). These are the level geometry models for a given .map file. Have fun looking at the map geometry! But heed these notes below...

IMPORTANT! Every time you open a .map file from a new Halo game you will need to Right Click on a file and select "Open With". Here you NEED to select "Model Viewer" and click the button that says "Set as Default". If you don't do this then your model will not open up and you can't extract it or it's textures!

Note 2 Certain map files will be BIG and they may make Reclaimer act kinda slow and say it isn't responding. This is normal in most cases and if you give it enough time Reclaimer will get ahold of itself and finish loading the data for the map and display it on the right once it is done!

Note 3 Sometimes you might click on a model file and the model viewer will open up, but you won't see anything displayed. This tends to happen because a model is small, or is a flat texture you can't see very well. To fix this in most cases you just have to click and drag your mouse on the blue space in the model viewer and that should refresh the Model Viewer and your model will show up (90% of the time).


Movement Controls for the Model Viewer
[REQUIRED: Holding down Left Click on Model Viewer display window]
WASD keys to move camera around
 RF keys for up/down camera movement

[Controls that don't require holding Left Click]
[Use numpad arrow keys instead]
View distance control (up/down arrows) 
FOV control (left/right arrows)



Extracting the Models and Textures
So now you are a pro at finding models and have the one you want. Next you will need to know how to extract the files themselves along with their textures (if you want those too).
Once a model is open in the Model Viewer there are three icons (out of seven) to pay attention to above the Model Viewer's "search" bar and they are the three on the right side! When extracting you can designate a folder for the files to go into.

3 Big White Squares (Export Bitmaps) - This button is for extracting all the bitmap textures for the selected model in the Model Viewer.

1 Blue Floppy Disk (Export Selected Geometry) - This button is for extracting all the model data from the list below the Model Viewer's search bar. Once you have the sections of the model you wish to extract by checking their check boxes you can then extract them with this button. This is helpful because things like Vehicles and NPCs have stacked models to show different clothing/faces/damage and unchecking the parts you don't want will get you something specific instead of all them at once.

2 Blue Floppy Disks (Export All Geometry) - This button is for extracting ALL sections of the model in the Model Viewer.


Note If you expand a check box in the Model Viewer you can double click on the sub-categories that expand and that will auto focus the Model Viewer onto that section of the model, then you can click and drag on the screen to move your camera around to view the model.


DONE!
You now have extracted your desired model from the Halo Master Chief Collection and are (hopefully) super happy with the result! I put a lot of time into this tutorial, making sure I include all the things I learned when doing this on my own (and with the help of Gravemind himself). I hope this is helpful to you Halo model extractors out there and please post your questions if you have problems with something, I'll try to check in from time to time to see if someone has a question. I did my best to be very thorough though so please if you have a problem with something PLEASE reread my tutorial, because I do believe I included just about everything you need to know about this process (especially in the Notes). If you can't reach me on here you can reach me on Discord, my username is: Plastered_Crab#1070

Happy extracting friends!

[RedditMan1337]

Came here from Reddit! This tutorial has been extremely helpful. I've been wanting to extract Halo models for a long time, and this made it very easy to get started. Thank you for your time making this!

[Keltoi]

Came here from Reddit! This tutorial has been extremely helpful. I've been wanting to extract Halo models for a long time, and this made it very easy to get started. Thank you for your time making this!

No problem! I wanted to make it easier for people to get what they are looking for. I hope to soon update this tutorial for Halo 5 model extraction as well as sound FX / Music extraction too. Contact me on Discord at Plastered_Crab#1070 of you have any other questions or you want something specific you are having trouble getting yourself

[Elmoz]

Hi, it says I dont have permission to do anything with the .map file? its the windows 10 version, I tried altering the permissions but I cant for the .map files.
And are the model files inside the map files? you never specified where to find the model files?

[Keltoi]

Hi, it says I dont have permission to do anything with the .map file? its the windows 10 version, I tried altering the permissions but I cant for the .map files.
And are the model files inside the map files? you never specified where to find the model files?

Hey thanks for reaching out for help! If it's saying you don't have permission to access the .map files am I wrong to assume you might be trying to use the game pass version of the MCC?
To answer your other question the .map files contain every single asset needed by that certain level including sounds, models, textures, etc. Once you get the .map file loaded up properly the models will be located in the gbxmodels folder if it's Halo CE, and render_model folder if it's any other Halo game. I outlined this information in the Models section of the tutorial.

If you are using the game pass version of the MCC I recommend you don't try to use those .map files actually. For some reason those .map files don't work very well anyways and I think it is due to how 343 did the porting of the games to PC. In the tutorial I included a link to every .map file for every Halo game so you can just grab them from there instead and they will work great! Just make sure you include the mandatory files I outlined on the tutorial above or else the .map files will have glitched textures and be broken.

I hope this helps you! If you still have trouble then reach out to me on here again or on discord at Plastered_Crab#1070

[Elmoz]

Hi, it says I dont have permission to do anything with the .map file? its the windows 10 version, I tried altering the permissions but I cant for the .map files.
And are the model files inside the map files? you never specified where to find the model files?

Hey thanks for reaching out for help! If it's saying you don't have permission to access the .map files am I wrong to assume you might be trying to use the game pass version of the MCC?
To answer your other question the .map files contain every single asset needed by that certain level including sounds, models, textures, etc. Once you get the .map file loaded up properly the models will be located in the gbxmodels folder if it's Halo CE, and render_model folder if it's any other Halo game. I outlined this information in the Models section of the tutorial.

If you are using the game pass version of the MCC I recommend you don't try to use those .map files actually. For some reason those .map files don't work very well anyways and I think it is due to how 343 did the porting of the games to PC. In the tutorial I included a link to every .map file for every Halo game so you can just grab them from there instead and they will work great! Just make sure you include the mandatory files I outlined on the tutorial above or else the .map files will have glitched textures and be broken.

I hope this helps you! If you still have trouble then reach out to me on here again or on discord at Plastered_Crab#1070

Hi yes I was using the MCC version haha.

Ah okay I thought as much that everything is contained in the .map file. 

Now that I used your .map file archive I got it to work, thank you very much.

[Keltoi]

Hi, it says I dont have permission to do anything with the .map file? its the windows 10 version, I tried altering the permissions but I cant for the .map files.
And are the model files inside the map files? you never specified where to find the model files?

Hey thanks for reaching out for help! If it's saying you don't have permission to access the .map files am I wrong to assume you might be trying to use the game pass version of the MCC?
To answer your other question the .map files contain every single asset needed by that certain level including sounds, models, textures, etc. Once you get the .map file loaded up properly the models will be located in the gbxmodels folder if it's Halo CE, and render_model folder if it's any other Halo game. I outlined this information in the Models section of the tutorial.

If you are using the game pass version of the MCC I recommend you don't try to use those .map files actually. For some reason those .map files don't work very well anyways and I think it is due to how 343 did the porting of the games to PC. In the tutorial I included a link to every .map file for every Halo game so you can just grab them from there instead and they will work great! Just make sure you include the mandatory files I outlined on the tutorial above or else the .map files will have glitched textures and be broken.

I hope this helps you! If you still have trouble then reach out to me on here again or on discord at Plastered_Crab#1070

Hi yes I was using the MCC version haha.

Ah okay I thought as much that everything is contained in the .map file. 

Now that I used your .map file archive I got it to work, thank you very much.

No problem! Always glad to help
It turns out that the newest version of the Reclaimer program works for MCC, but only the Halo 3 and Reach as far as I've tested it. But you still need the required files like shared.map, campaign.map, etc.

It's best to use my collection of .map files though just so you know it'll work

[flipdark95]

Hey, I'm getting a error when trying to open any Halo 2 maps, even though the latest update for Reclaimer said it was now fully able to support opening the file types for Halo 2?

[Keltoi]

Hey, I'm getting a error when trying to open any Halo 2 maps, even though the latest update for Reclaimer said it was now fully able to support opening the file types for Halo 2?

Hi there! Did you try updating your MCC as well? Also if you join the discord near the top of this tutorial we can help you more if that doesn't work!

[Nooga]

Ooh, thanks for this! Might rip me some (rigged, hopefully) elites and upload them on TMR.

EDIT: Armatures are borked

[Keltoi]

Ooh, thanks for this! Might rip me some (rigged, hopefully) elites and upload them on TMR.

EDIT: Armatures are borked

Try using the new Amf importer that came out for it as it can extract with the armatures in tact

[EmperorIng217]

Ooh, thanks for this! Might rip me some (rigged, hopefully) elites and upload them on TMR.

EDIT: Armatures are borked

[Mended]

I need some help!

my Friend and I have tried to rip from the .maps, we were able to get the Forerunner Light Rifle and the turret, but we can't get the main texture for the Binary Rifle nor anything of the Forerunner scatter rifle (shotgun) and pistol

we tried on both our PCS, we tried using the provided maps then we also tried just using the game's files themselves, but for some reason the Binary Rifle doesn't have a main texture, and we can't get the Scatter Rifle or Pistol?

please help!

[EmperorIng217]

Is there any way whatsoever to extract the textures for the Halo 4 multiplayer spartan models? No matter what I try and YES I HAVE EVERYTHING IN ALL THE FOLDERS SO DON"T ASK, they all (besides the infected shit) show up as yellow in the viewer and none of the diffuse textures can be extracted although oddly, the normals can. Is there any solution whatsoever?! I was able to extract everything from the Reach multiplayer models just fine, wtf is the godfucking problem?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Keltoi]

I need some help!

my Friend and I have tried to rip from the .maps, we were able to get the Forerunner Light Rifle and the turret, but we can't get the main texture for the Binary Rifle nor anything of the Forerunner scatter rifle (shotgun) and pistol

we tried on both our PCS, we tried using the provided maps then we also tried just using the game's files themselves, but for some reason the Binary Rifle doesn't have a main texture, and we can't get the Scatter Rifle or Pistol?

please help!

I'm a little late, but we have all those models in our discord server and tons of other fully setup weapon packs https://discord.gg/haloarchive

Sorry I didn't see this sooner!

---

Is there any way whatsoever to extract the textures for the Halo 4 multiplayer spartan models? No matter what I try and YES I HAVE EVERYTHING IN ALL THE FOLDERS SO DON"T ASK, they all (besides the infected shit) show up as yellow in the viewer and none of the diffuse textures can be extracted although oddly, the normals can. Is there any solution whatsoever?! I was able to extract everything from the Reach multiplayer models just fine, wtf is the godfucking problem?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Halo 4 is a bit silly tbh especially with Reclaimer sometimes. We have a complete multiplayer Halo 4 Spartan pack ready to use at our discord group: https://discord.gg/haloarchive