Extracting Horizon Forbidden West 2

Extracting, together with frame capture, is a very good way to learn from a game. By extracting, you can retrieve the models, textures, animations from the game and study their specification, reuse them for POV etc.

Extracting Horizon Forbidden West 2 PC

First you need to download the game via Steam. And download the extracting tool. Someone has created a very comprehensive version(archive) that not only extracts but also organize and merges.

Parsing

Loading the models

the .SMD only works with Blender 4.2 or higher so if you are using older versions you need to upgrade your blender.

Unfortunitely, the io_import_scene_ascii.py shipped with the HorizonExtractor is not compatible with 4.2 and will throw an error. To fix it, comment out the use_auto_smooth variable:

Additionally, you might encounter the following error:

IndexError: bpy_struct: item.attr = val: sequence expected at dimension 1, not 'int'. Check the input data or file format.
after
    0.00600433349609375 secs
  3c13_2_static

This issue was identified as occurring only when creating materials. So the quickest fix is to uncheck “Materials” when importing.

Loading the animations

As for the animations, it’s much simpler. You just need to install the Blender Source Tools. And after importing, blender will drive the binded models automatically.