Hey alteredillusion,
To start off, you'll need two things.
- Switch Toolbox (Extracting the animations)
- Blender Source Tools (Importing the animations)
With Switch Toolbox open, go to File > Open (Folder), and select the folder from the games dump called 'ObjectData'. When that folder opens up, you should see a long list of .SZS files. Those are packages that contain models, textures, animations, and other files. Scroll through them until you find the model you like. Just a quick heads up about the model names, a lot of models use their internal Japanese names, so it can be hard to find some models with those names. Here's a little translation list:
Kuribo = Goomba
Nokonoko = Koopa Troopa
Kinopio = Toad
Koopa = Bowser
Once you have the model you would like to extract the animations from, double-click on the .SZS file. Inside that will be a .BFRES file; double-click on that as well. In the viewport to the right, you should see your model loaded. You should also see a list of folders under the .BFRES file. You should see models, textures, animations, etc. Click the + symbol in the Animations folder to see the animations for that model.
If the Animation folder doesn't have a + symbol, it means the animations are stored elsewhere in another .SZS. For example, there is the .SZS package for Bowser called "Koopa.SZS" for the model, etc. And there is another .SZS package called 'KoopaAnimation.SZS', containing the animations.
Once you have found the animation you would like to export, click on it to give it a preview on the associated model. Right-click the animation file and export it as a .SMD. (This is the format we can import into Blender using the addon mentioned above.)
Once you have downloaded the .ZIP addon for the Source Tools, open up Blender and go to Edit > Preferences > Addons. Then click import and select the downloaded .ZIP archive. The addon should pop-up in the list, go and enable it.
If your model has been downloaded from the Models Resource, it should most likely have a .FBX model with it. If not, you can convert the model to a .FBX in a piece of handy software called
Noesis Make sure when exporting the model to tick the “Flip UV’s” box. You'll want to then import the .FBX instead of the .DAE, as the Blender .DAE importer is quite broken.
With your model imported, go to File > Import > Source Tools (SMD) and select the .SMD animation we exported before.
And there you go! You should now have Super Mario Odyssey's animations imported into Blender!
Let me know if you have any questions!
DJ~