Installing Slicers GUI and extracting SWTOR game assets - SWTOR-Slicers/WikiPedia GitHub Wiki

WARNING: our tools are almost but not yet fully compatible with files extracted from SWTOR Game Update 7.2.1 onwards (SWTOR 64 bits):

Slicers GUI is usable: it both extracts and locates game assets in any version of SWTOR. As locating character assets is this bit buggy at the moment, we recommend using the SWTOR Character Assembler Addon for this process, instead.
The .gr2 Importer Addon is half-way there: it imports objects, characters, their skeletons, and applies materials correctly, but the handling of animations is yet to be solved.

It can import older SWTOR 32 bit versions of those, though. If you need them, you could replace the resources/anim folder in your 64 bits assets extraction with the one from a SWTOR extraction previous to the Game Update (whose files you can download from here. Only the files with an "anim" in their filenames are needed). You'll need to use an older version of Slicers GUI, 1.11.1

WARNING: there is a bug that makes Slicers GUI miss extracting a crucial file: "black.dds". The typical symptom is that Slicers GUI's Locate process doesn't finish instantly, and the results of processing a character folder are incomplete.

The SWTOR Character Assembler Add-on and the one integrated in the ZG SWTOR Tools Add-on solve that by putting a copy of the file in the correct place if they detect it's missing).
If you aren't using those add-ons, get the missing file from here and put it inside your Output Folder's resources\art\defaultassets subfolder to prevent issues with other tools.

Slicers GUI's Installation of Terror.

Downloading and installing the Slicers GUI tool is a bit scary an experience because of the intimidating security warning screens popping up, which we can't evade because the only way to avoid them is paying for the security certificates needed to validate apps as coming from a known developer.

So, we'll walk through the process to show what comes up in that regard.

As with the rest of our tools, the Slicers GUI is available at this repository in our GitHub:

Inside it, we see the usual repository page containing the tool's source code and a description. Instead of directly downloading that code, we use the link in the description, which takes us to the releases for the project:

IMPORTANT: from Game Update 7.2.1 onwards, SWTOR has become a 64 bit app. As of this moment, our only release compatible with SWTOR 64 is 1.12.0 (the one saying "IMPORTANT: For use with the x64 client only"). This release maintains full compatibility with older SWTOR 32 bit files, too.

To download the installer file, we simply click on the link to the executable file under the Assets section (if not visible, we twirl the arrow at its side to reveal it).

The download of this tool's latest versions weights around 450 MB (Slicers GUI is an Electron-type app, the likes of the popular Discord. Those contain whole internet browsers inside to facilitate web-style programming, which makes them rather big. On top of that, the tool now provides background music!). Once done, there we have our installer (obviously, the version number will vary with each new release):

We double-click on it aaaaand…

Okay, that feels a little ominous, and leaves us apparently stuck, with no options to go on. Well, they are hidden under that link. If we click on it…

…We'll get a means to go on with the installation anyway:

NOTE ON ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE: if you use an antivirus such as, say, Avast or Microsoft's Windows Defender (the one built in Windows 10), and notice that some of the steps already described or the next ones don't work, check if the antivirus has quarantined some element of the app and, if so, have it OK it back into place. They seem to be extra paranoid with the app's extraction.exe element, classifying it as Ransomware.

Now we'll see a fancy animation for a few seconds (the installer takes a little while) and then an initial setup screen appears. Before filling it in, we need to consider a few things.

Setting up.

SWTOR stores its assets in an "Assets" folder that contains a series of rather big .tor files with fairly descriptive names. Sadly, we have no means to easily and quickly find and extract individual files from inside a .tor file. The only practical way to work is to select the ones that are relevant to what we want to do (assemble a player character, assemble a location of the game, extract the game music and sound effects, etc.), extract everything from them, and keep the results around.

And that's the issue: the results, depending on what we want, could fill up to 70-ish GigaBytes of storage space! For the Player Character stuff we are going to need about 32 GB., which still is a lot, especially in this era of affordable laptops that top out at 256 GB. If we are very constrained, we might have to consider using a secondary hard disk drive, or external storage (a big USB thumbdrive, a external HD or SSD enclosure, etc.)

So, knowing that, let's see what the installer is asking us for (it shows tooltips if we hover over the labels and fields, by the way):

The Resources Folder:

The very first thing it's asking us is a location where to place the app's own files: preferences of several types (in human-readable format, by the way), the all-important hashes_filename.txt (the file containing the list of known, identified game assets, that we typically update as the game does), etc.

WARNING: the installer won't create a folder where to put its stuff, so we better do it ourselves. If we pointed it to the Desktop we'd find those files spread among whatever was already there. So, we create one ourselves, naming it "Slicers GUI" or similar, putting it wherever we want: for example, on the aforementioned Desktop.

WARNING: we won't be able to change this folder's location without uninstalling (through Windows' Preferences Panel's apps options) and reinstalling.
The Assets Folder:

The second thing it asks us is the location of SWTOR's "Assets" folder. If we used swtor.com's installer to install the game, it typically is at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\Assets

If we installed the game through Steam, the default location is:

C:\Program Files (86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Star Wars – The Old Republic\Assets

This setting can be changed afterwards (for example, to point at the assets of a SWTOR's Public Test Server download).
The Output Folder.

It asks us where the result of our extracting and converting activities (those big assets extractions, sound and 3D file conversions, etc.) will be placed. As explained, for assembling Player Characters we'll need almost 39 GBs., but if we intend to grow beyond that the worst case scenario (extracting just everything) means around 88 GBs., and then we might want to have some extra spare space for additional stuff (for example, for batch-conversions of some of those assets to other formats). Still, we can begin with those 32 GB. and move and expand them around later on.

This setting can be changed afterwards, so that the results of the extraction can be moved around if needed.

WARNING: don't select the same folder used to hold the app's own files (the Resources Folder). The reason is that, so far, the only way we have to update the app is by uninstalling an old version and installing a new one, and the process deletes that folder. If we put everything in there, an update would mean losing the extracted assets and we would have to extract them again.

WARNING: Also, don't place it in the root of your boot drive (say, C:\my_output_folder). For some reason, Slicers GUI's game assets extractions fail if the destination folder is in the root of a C: drive. This problem shouldn't affect the root of other partitions or drives but, just in case, create a folder in there first through Windows' File Explorer, as it seems to be some kind of permissions issue. We are investigating it, and as soon as we solve it we'll announce it, because that location would be a very convenient one otherwise.

External drives are perfectly valid destinations: adequately sized thumbdrives, external drive enclosures, NAS, remote drives…

Regarding our Desktop and Document folders, and cloud services such as OneDrive: the Desktop and Documents folders are very typical catch-all places for things we want to have at hand, and are perfectly valid locations for the results of our extractions. But if we happen to use cloud storage services such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox and the like, those folders might be set to be automatically synchronized with those services (if our Windows user account is a Microsoft account instead of a local one, we'll see that the Desktop and Documents folders are OneDrive subfolders!).

We might want such syncing to happen, actually, in which case all is well. But we might not, for example, if we have a metered internet connection: a big assets extraction copied to OneDrive could make us reach our monthly internet limit very quickly.

Usually, we can set exclusions so that specific folders or files aren't copied, but maybe it's better to just make sure that the Slicers GUI's output folder is set somewhere we are sure isn't being synced. For example, directly inside C:\Users\my_user_name\Slicers GUI Output; or, if we have a second partition or drive, we can put it anywhere inside D:\.
The Install Language.

This refers to the language we run SWTOR in: English, French, or German. It happens that SWTOR downloads its language-related game assets (user interface, all text, voiceovers) only in the one we chose in the installer, and won't download any other language versions unless we dig in the game launcher's preferences to choose them. That was causing us problems in the past (greying out the Extraction Presets menu). With this option we can match what the game has and save us trouble.

After we have selected the locations and options for everything, the installer will put what it needs in the app folder we selected, and place an app shortcut on the desktop.

And that's it! On finishing, the installer will launch the app for us.

As we can see, it's an all-in-one kind of affair, with a few features already working and others pending implementation. It shows the setup directories that we are allowed to change, as aforementioned, plus another that is meant to point to game character folders exported by TORCommunity.com's Character Designer or by its database's 3D viewer.

Extracting SWTOR's assets.

(NOTE: if you extracted the game assets with the old EasyMYP tool, don't discard its results!!! You can use them just by placing the resulting "resources" folder, and the rest of the folders containing uncatalogued assets too, if you want to, inside the Output Folder we just mentioned, and skip this assets extraction step altogether. That said, Slicers GUI usually comes with the latest hash file available. Both EasyMYP and Slicers GUI respect the resources folder's subfolders structure and can overwrite it to update it without making a mess)

Slicers GUI provides with a very simple, two-clicks way to extract and store SWTOR's assets.

As during the app's installation we have already told it where the game's "Assets" folder is located and where we want to store the results of its usage (although we can change that in any moment), the only thing left to do is select whether we want to extract all the assets or just the subset that better fits our needs and available space in our hard disks or SSD.

The presets are:

All: all assets. It fills about 88 GB. of storage space.
Node: this is an information-only extraction. We can disregard it.
Dynamic: all assets related to Player and Non-Player Characters. We included not just the strictly dynamic-type assets (humanoid body parts and armor gear, plus NPC creatures) but weapons and vehicles, too, as we expect you would want to have them at hand. It fills almost 39 GB. of storage space.
Static: all assets related to locations and environments. It shares with the Dynamic preset some stuff like speeders and vehicles. Almost 46 GB.

As there are many shared assets between both our Dynamic and Static presets, extracting both sets in succession will result in 73 GB. of filled storage instead of the sum of about 85 GB..
Sound: all music and sound effects (note that they'll require further conversion in order to become usable). Around 5 GB.
GUI: all the graphic elements of SWTOR's graphic user interface: ability icons, Cartel Market goods' previews, maps, panels' frames, etc. Includes some 3D UI elements, too. About 1.7 GB.
Unnamed: what this option does is extract all the assets in the game files that haven't been identified yet (luckily, they are very few). We can disregard it.

For this use case (recreating our characters) we select the Dynamic preset (32 GB) (or, alternatively, the All preset).

Then we click on the Extract button, and we'll see the Log panel show a progress bar while the app does its job.

Depending on the preset and the speed of our computers (modern processors, traditional hard disks vs. 2.5" SATA SSD vs. PCIe NVMe SSD), the task can be either fairly zippy (less than five minutes) or rather despairingly slow (half an hour or more, maybe). The reason is that the extracted assets consist of hundreds of thousands of tiny files, which is something that often slows things down far more than sheer size, specially in mechanical drives.

WARNING: Microsoft's Windows Defender might react to the extraction process. It seems Microsoft has dialed up its paranoia (and rightly so, considering these times, but still…).

Once it's done we can move on to the next page of the guide.

The results of the extraction.

If all we are interested in is assembling our character, there's no need to read this: we are good to go to the next section. Still, there are some details that might be helpful to know.

The results of the extraction are in a folder named "resources", located inside the one we set to store the results of the app's operation (through the "Output Folder" field). It contains a hierarchy of nested subfolders that can get fairly deep. Users of apps such as Poser or Daz Studio will feel familiarity with such scheme, similar to those apps' assets libraries.

As long as the chosen output folder stays the same between extracting operations, the Slicers GUI will merge the different presets' results correctly: it'll simply result in a richer hierarchy of subfolders and files. So, we can start with the Dynamic preset to play with PC and NPC stuff and, later on, graduate to building game locations by adding the results of the Static preset.

We might want to change the output folder sometimes, though:

To produce a separate extraction that uses as game assets not the normal ones but the ones from SWTOR's Public Test Server.
To move the whole output folder somewhere else (say, a new, bigger SSD). Once moved, it's just a matter of pointing the Slicers GUI to its new location. A little warning: moving the folder to a different device will take long. Remember: it's hundreds of thousands of little files.