How to view models & test textures

Kentalin’s Model Viewer lets you view character models and test textures. BrawlBox let you do this for Smash Bros. Brawl, and SZS Modifier has a restricted model viewer that works for most models, but this program really comes in handy for NSMBwii. Visit the tools page for downloads to all the programs mentioned here.

This guide will tell you how to extract Mario’s main body model, and extract and test his costume textures.

First you need to extract Mario.arc, the file containing all of Mario’s animation, texture and body data, from the NSMBwii ISO. If you don’t have an ISO, check google or rip one yourself with WiiDump. Use WiiScrubber to extract Mario.arc from the ‘object’ folder on the NSMBwii ISO (right-click on Mario.arc and click ‘Extract’).

Load SZS Modifier, expand the folder view in the left pane to model.brres, right-click model.brres and click ‘Export Raw Data…’. Save the file as Mario.brres. This is the same as what U8Mii does, except it can convert entire folders to brres files.

You can now view Mario’s normal body by renaming Mario.brres to MarioBody.brmdl and opening it with Kentalin’s Model Viewer.

To view his other costumes, you need to extract the mdl0 files from Mario.brres (or Mario.arc). Open Mario.brres/arc and expand the folder view to the ’3DModels’ folder. Inside here are the models for Mario’s various states. MB_model is Mario’s normal body, MC_model is his cap, and MH_model is his head, etc. We want to use his penguin body, so right-click ‘PMB_model’ and click ‘Export Raw Data…’. At the Save dialog, type the filename MarioBody, with the extension ‘brmdl’ (ie ‘MarioBodyPenguin.brmdl’). Now load this file with Kentalin’s Model viewer. Unfortunately, the model for Mario’s Penguin suit is massively distorted, but it can give you a rough impression of how your textures will look in-game. Mario’s head and cap textures will work fine in Kentalin’s Model Viewer however, as will other objects.

To view your textures, you need to create a brtex file. We don’t have one yet, so we’ll use an existing one. Load either SZS Modifier and open Mario.arc, or BrawlBox and open Mario.brres. Navigate to the texture folder. If you’re using SZS Modifier, double-click on the image, then choose File> Export. If you’re using BrawlBox, right-click the texture you want to export and click ‘Export’. We want Mario’s normal body, so extract ‘player_body.0′ and call it MarioBody.png. Now load BrawlBox and click File> New> Brres Resource Pack. Right-click your ‘NewTree’ and select Import> Texture, then select MarioBody.png. Click ‘Okay’ in the preview dialog, then go to File> Save, and name your file MarioBodyTexture.brtex.

Now load Kentalin’s Model Viewer using MarioBody.brmdl. go to Textures> Load Single Texture, and select MarioBodyTexture.brtex. To turn off the wireframe view, click Options> Faces. From the ‘Options’ menu you can also change lighting, turn off the background or axes and disable ‘Colour’, which seems to remove shadows from your model. If you want to try some other textures, try exracting Luigi’s costume or downloading Brawl Wario’s texture maps.

When you’re trying out a new texture, you can open MarioBodyTexture.brtex with BrawlBox, navigate to your texture in the folder view pane, right-click the file’s current texture and choose ‘Replace’, then save. This makes it a lot easier to test minor changes in created textures every half a minute, to get that really spot-on texture positioning.