Texture extraction/replacement tool

This tool lets you extract and replace any texture in the game. Only recommended for advanced users.

Information

This tool enables you to extract and replace any texture in the game. This quickly gets technical and I don't have extensive documentation, so it might be not be intuitive to people new to modding. All textures in the game are in DDS format. They're usually in MLX (files with models, textures, and/or other data), HTX (files containing only texture data), and Valkyria.exe (contains all the button prompt textures created for the PC port).

When editing textures I highly recommend using nvidia's official DDS tools (their photoshop plugin or their command prompt tools). You can find these utilities here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools
https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

Download

You can download the texture tool from here: https://www.fluffyquack.com/tools/VCtool.rar

Usage information:
- Drag'n'drop files onto the extract.bat and replace.bat batch files in Windows explorer.
OR
- Use it in command prompt (ie, "vctool -x valcA02aD_h.mlx" to extract, "vctool -r valcA02aD_h.mlx" to replace)

If you want the source code for the tool, that's available here: https://www.fluffyquack.com/tools/source/VCtool.rar

[FluffyQuack]

@JERisBRISK: My site is supposed to be up. Maybe it was down that day.

[JERisBRISK]

Hey Fluffy! I hope all is well. I just circled back to this thread and out of an abundance of curiosity, tried to download the VCtool afresh. I notice that fluffyquack.com seems to be offline entirely. I hop you're ok and just being frugal!

[Niko]

Asked about this on xentax as well, but wanted to get your insight as the creator of the tool I'm using.
Link to xentax post: https://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?p=171968#p171968
tldr: I'm working on upscaling VC's textures, but am running into infinite loading screens when trying to use them in game. Seems to not be an issue of how big a single texture is, but something to do with the combined size of all the textures (was able to load with upscaled textures A and B injected, and with upscaled texture C injected, but not with A B and C, for example). Any idea what exactly the limiting factor is, and any way of getting around it? I assume it's not a memory issue (on a DX9 level at least), as I'm getting it even with just the title screen texture upscaled (1024x1024 texture upscaled to 4096x4096 stops it from loading, downscaling to 2048x2048 gets it to load - this is in texture_replace, not injected with vctool)

[Swing]

I'm asking because I want to be able to take pics of the models to use as sprites for a mod... except it would be cool to use the EW1 battlefield and make a WW1 mod with texture swap/ and maybe swap some of the model parts; 32 on 32 would be pretty damn cool see if we can add some mg bunkers etc...

[Swing]

yeah I've tried that for over 6 hours I got a virus Dling Photoshop and I have 3ds max for free for the month. I've done everything they've talked about using that xentax DL VC_something and I've followed all the intructions Blender doesn't do sh*t, the farthest I've got was using opening up the models in photoshop but only their textures

[FluffyQuack]

Swing: I believe people over at xentax forums has made tools for that. Google "valkyria chronicles site:xentax.com" and you should find it in one of those threads.

[Swing]

I can only view the textures is there anyway I can view the 3d models?

[JERisBRISK]

Thanks again. I was trying to figure out how to inspect the actual texture to know. (I could hack around with your Cpp and find out that way to some extent... But I figure that there's a better way to know. Photoshop's built-in File Info seems useless for DDS files. :)

[FluffyQuack]

Well, it varies. I suggest you look at the original DDS texture to see what it is. But in general: most textures with alpha are DXT5, most textures without alpha are DXT1, UI textures usually don't have mipmaps, model textures usually have mipmaps, and all textures within executable are uncompressed RGBA.

[JERisBRISK]

So, been messing around with the textures (thanks for the extract/replace tool!) but I've hit a bit of a wall. the NVIDIA DDS tool for PS suggests about 30 different save formats and a lot of associated options. I doubt the "defaults" are correct. Can you give some insight as to the right things to choose? (bpp & alpha settings, to generate MIP maps or not, etc.?)