mielly's ff7 model ripping tutorial

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                                                        HOW I EXTRACT AND CONVERT
                                                     FF7 BATTLE MODELS TO .OBJ FILES
                                                 aka mielly's ff7 model ripping tutorial
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            ─── ⋆⋅☆ WHAT YOU'LL NEED ☆⋅⋆ ───



★ ULGP : extracts individual model files from a .LGP file!
    ↪ ꒰ https://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12831.0 ꒱
       ⚠︎ i used version 1.2

★ BITURN : reads, converts and exports our extracted files!
    ↪ ꒰ https://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1 ꒱
       ⚠︎ i used version 0.87 beta 4!

★ KUJATA : a FF7 data viewer, will be useful to know what files we'll need!
    ↪ ꒰ https://dangarfield.github.io/kujata-webapp/ ꒱
       ⚠︎ select which category you'd like to see on the upper left corner,
                in this case, we'll be looking at Battle Models!

and of course,

★ FINAL FANTASY VII needs to be installed on your computer
         as that's where we'll be getting our files!


⚠︎ please note models may have weird lighting as an end result ⚠︎
        but as of rn i dont know of a way to fix it!



         ─── ⋆⋅☆ EXTRACTING THE FILES ☆⋅⋆ ───



     ☆  1. FINDING THE .LGP FILE YOU'LL NEED  ☆


in this case, since we're looking at the battle models,
       you'll need to find the BATTLE.LGP file

go into your final fantasy vii installation folder, go
to the DATA folder, and then the BATTLE, where you'll
              find the battle.lgp file

 (⚠︎ the destination for the steam version should be
   Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY VII\data )

                      ‼ ‼ ‼
   if instead you'd like to export the FIELD models,
instead of going into the BATTLE folder you'll want to
      go into FIELD and grab the char.LGP file
                      ‼ ‼ ‼


       ☆  2. EXTRACTING THE .LGP FILE WITH UGLP  ☆


    extract the uglp .7z you downloaded, run UGLPGUI.EXE

select your .GLP file and enter the folder you'd like to extract
it to, i'd recomment you make a new folder for it since we'll be
   dealing with around 11k files for battle.lgp in specific!

         make sure DUMP is selected, then click start

after the progress bar is full, we can proceed to the next step


             ☆  3. IDENTIFYING OUR FILES  ☆


this step is entirely optional but will lessen your wait time with
 biturn since you're dealing with thousands of files and help you
               understand how these files work!

go to KUJATA, since we're looking for the battle models that's what
            you'll select on the top right corner

once the page has loaded, you can look for the model you want to
            export, we'll use cloud as an example!

once we find cloud, we can see his battle model id is RTAA, so,
opening the folder where we have extracted our .LGP file, we'll
                       search for RTAA

make sure to keep all files starting with RTA, such as RTAA,
RTAB, RTAC, etc., as we'll need most of these for the model
to work fully! each file correspond to a component such as
the mesh, bones, textures, etc. so i'd say keep all of their
         corresponding files just to be safe!

(the same goes for other playable characters! if an id RUAA
    you'll want to keep the files RUAB, RUAC, RUAD...)

either copy your files to a different folder or delete all the
unwanted files so you'll have a smoother time loading them in
                      biturn later!


      ☆  4. CONVERTING AND EXPORTING WITH BITURN  ☆


run biturn, the program can be a bit glitchy overall so keep
 the folder with the files you've extracted in a directory
              which biturn can easily access!

once you select your folder, all the data in it will load and
 you can see every element of the models you have extracted

look for the FF7 BATTLE SKELETON model, and select it to check
        if everything has been extracted correctly

after that, choose your destination format, in this case, i
converted it into a WAVEFRONT OBJ for blender compatibility
  but it can vary depending on your program of choice

you can also rename your converted file and change the destination
    if you wish to do so, after doing that, click CONVERT



                  ☆  5. THAT'S IT!  ☆


    you can now open and edit the converted model on blender or
            any other compatible 3D editing software!

i'm a complete beginner and have never done this before so i wanted
to compile the stuff i did in a hopefully easy to understand way for
            anyone looking to rip these models!!!


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        if anything is unclear please contact me @:
                    twitter @tarteaumiau
                  bsky @tarte.bsky.social
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