Halo-Asset-Blender-Development-Toolset VS Mr-Mannequins-Tools

Thanks! Initially I was eyeballing it based on ghost and warthog lengths but that quickly proved to be difficult and cumbersome. I got some tips thanks to UneeQ in exporting the BSP (map structure data) from Reclaimer and importing it into Blender using the Halo Asset Blender Development Toolset

First off, I'll assume you're using Blender, so download the Halo Blender Toolset addon (https://github.com/General-101/Halo-Asset-Blender-Development-Toolset) and get it setup in Blender. You will then need to download the Halo Editing Kit from Steam. Once you have all the tags (models, sounds, AI data etc) unzipped, you can use the Blender tools to import models. Use these models and their armatures as a basis to work from.

You can use Blender with the Halo Asset exporter/importer tool to create maps, however it is still in development and Halo 3 is only partially supported. Additionally can visit the Reclaimers Library website for tutorials and other helpful information on the Halo engine (including tutorials on creating maps from scratch)

I'm using Halo-Asset-Blender-Development-Toolset to import the BSP into Blender

There's a lot of resources out there now actually! https://c20.reclaimers.net/ is a great hub for all kinds of documentation. fryingpanproductions made a playlist of various tutorials for Halo 3, although it seems like they've been on hiatus. TheChunkierBean also has tutorials, including getting custom assets into Halo 3. Plus the Halo Mods discord is very active and very helpful.

The easiest way to get models is to extract them from the games yourself, since openly sharing them is generally taken down by Microsoft depending on the platform. The current mod tools plus the Halo Blender addon will allow you to pull whatever you'd like straight from MCC. That addon is here: https://github.com/General-101/Halo-Asset-Blender-Development-Toolset Make sure you have at least Blender 3.1.0 if you've already played around with it in the past.

A great resource is The Reclaimers Library website; it's a guide for modding, for beginners, and also covers more advanced topics. It's guide for H1 is the most in-depth, but they also have MCC related guides as well. Since the engines all have very similar "cores", the workflow basics are very similar across games.

I would recommend installing Jim Kroovy's Mr. Mannequin tools (https://github.com/Jim-Kroovy/Mr-Mannequins-Tools) you can animate directly with the UE4 default skeleton with some pretty intuitive rigging features. Anything you export can be imported to the ALS skeleton (which is the same as the default UE4 one) or at the very least re-targeted to it.

To speed up things in Blender I recently found a tool called Mr Mannequins Tools. It’s pretty dope but is still in heavy development. Basically it generates rigs for you and handles IK. I’ve been using it and can be a bit confusing but once you learn how to use it, it’ll speed up everything by 10x.

Clive Barker called, he doesn't want you to know about Mr Mannequin Tools, but I find it pretty helpful.