Serializing unpaked assets - Chiv2-Community/ArgonSDK GitHub Wiki

Preparing files for Asset Generation. Results in raw asset files editable in Unreal Editor.

Goal

  • Convert cooked .uasset files to intermediary JSON format using “UEAssetToolkitGenerator” (CAS)
  • Asset list sorted by asset type as a bonus

Prerequisites

  1. Extracted game assets
  2. UEAssetToolkitGenerator by LongerWarrior (CAS)
    • make sure you download the release zip. Do not clone the source

[!caution] I strongly recommend reading the Wiki pages on CAS, especially about the generation process order.

CAS Setup

Start CAS, populate the paths and select the correct UE version (4.25)

CAS screenshot More info: Understanding the GUI

On the Serialization Settings tab, skip serializing all asset types except for:

  • Texture2D
  • Font
  • FontFace
  • StaticMesh

Serialization Settings

Important! On the main menu, save your current profile somewhere. This program will crash a lot during this process. Saving your profile and keeping Auto Load Profile on Launch checked will make those crashes less painful.

  1. Click Scan Assets on the Run tab, and let it scan through all assets. This only needs to be done once.
  2. Make sure all folders on the right side are checked at first
  3. Click the Serialize Assets button to start serializing assets.
TODO: find which types are safe to serialize at once

It can take approx 2 hours.

crashes

This program crashes a lot. It will be serializing, and then just close. When this happens, compare your CAS_Output folder structure to the folder structure shown on the right-side of the CAS tool. You will find that the folder structure is created up to a certain point. CAS serialized directories in the order shown on the right side, top-down with each directory and it's subdirectories being fully completed before the next one down is started.

strcuture comparison

Files in a directory are serialized before the subdirectories are. For example, the files in Rabbit01 will be serialized before any files that might be in Rabbit01\Animation. From this, we can infer which file the CAS serializer crashed on. The crashing file may be the one that is present on disk, or it may be the one immediately after in the list.

  1. Uncheck the directories that you can see have already been serialized so that CAS will not try to do them again.
    • Unless Refresh Assets is checked, keeping already serialized assets checked will do nothing and only waste time as CAS goes through those files at about the same pace it did initially.
  2. Uncheck the file(s) you believe are causing crashes
  3. save your profile to preserve these selections
  4. Try serializing again. Continue this process until you're done serializing everything.