Viewing and converting extracted assets with Noesis
We don't recommend Noesis as a SWTOR meshes conversion tool, as it destroys the models' Normals information and can only handle a single UV map. That said, it still has its uses.
For a very long while, Noesis, the popular game assets converter tool, was the only means many of us had for converting SWTOR's .gr2 3D models (a custom variation of the "granny" format) to more common ones such as .obj.
Nowadays, things have improved dramatically, to the point that we can completely disregard Noesis as a conversion tool. BUT!!! It can still be useful for a few purposes:
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To browse through our SWTOR assets extraction folders to preview 3D objects… in their fully textured glory (as long as they use non-recolorable materials such as Uber and Creature shaders-based ones)!
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To convert a SWTOR object's packed texture files (texture files that store in their RGBA channels disparate information such as opacity, glow, and normals for efficiency sake) to more conventional ones (separate opacity, glow and "blue" normal map texture files, etc.).
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And, finally, to batch-convert SWTOR's 3D objects to other formats, although, as said, that's not recommended because of some inherent problems (those could be solved by overhauling Noesis' SWTOR script, but it's doubtful it'll be done any soon).
Noesis is a tool created and supported by videogame programmer and designer Rich Whitehouse. It's meant to be a Swiss Army knife of videogame asset formats conversion and preview, covering images, 3D models, and even animations. It's extensible through both native extension modules and Python scripts.
And there exists a SWTOR models script for it.
The version of Noesis stored in its creator's website lacks the SWTOR script. We host in this Github a repository of Noesis that includes such script.
To download it, we go there, click on the green Code button and choose the Download Zip menu option.
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Now, we open the downloaded <NOESIS-Master.zip> file: inside, there is a NOESIS-Master folder. Don't drag'n'drop that to your Desktop yet! Open it instead and… inside you'll find the NOESIS folder that actually contains the app and its files 😛.
This is, by the way, the actual app: it doesn't require an installation step, so, we can drag this NOESIS folder wherever we want to.
We need now to let Noesis and its SWTOR script know where do we keep our stash of Slicers GUI or EasyMYP-extracted game assets, so that it can use the texture map files stored there when we look at the game's objects in its 3D viewer.
For that, we need to edit by hand the preference file for that SWTOR script. It's a file located inside NOESIS\plugins\python, named swtor-config.xml.
We can open it with any text editor, such as Notepad.
The bit we have to change is that default Z:\\2.8, replacing it with the path to the folder inside of which the extracted game assets folder resides. If the extraction was done with the Slicers GUI app, the path is the one set as the Output Folder field in that app's window. For example, C:\Users\my_user_name\SWTOR Stuff.
