The creator of the 3D printing video channel Makers Muse Angus Deveson has taken the time to demonstrate how to extract 3D models from the video game Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and details the process of converting those files into 3D printable models, in a new video tutorial.
Deveson chose the multi-player adventure game Chivalry: Medieval Warfare for his first video on the subject mainly because it was one of his favourite games. But while he really wanted to create models from some of the weapons there was another consideration. Because it is built on the Unreal Game Engine, there is already a huge network of community built tools and tutorials on extracting and editing in-game files, so that made his job of turning them into 3D printable models much easier.
While the process looks like it’s difficult and time consuming, especially if you see the list of programs that you’ll need, it is actually relatively simple if you have experience editing 3D files. But if you decide to open up the code for your PC game make sure that you copy any files that you want to use to a different folder. Altering game files might interfere with your gameplay, or if you play online it may look like you are using illegal game mods and that could get your account banned.
Additionally, the legality of pulling 3D mesh files from the game and 3D printing them is still murky. While you own the game, and the files within it, altering them may void warranties, and depending on the game it may violate the terms of service. However provided that you are only making them for yourself and not selling them or sharing the 3D models online you should be fine. Just don’t think you won’t get slapped with a takedown notice if you put the models that you extract up on Thingiverse or Shapeways, because you probably will.
The video is a little long, but it’s a process with quite a few steps that needs to be explained thoroughly, but it’s well worth the watch:
As mentioned, you’ll need a few programs to extract the files from Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and other PC games like it. First you need Umodel, an Unreal Engine Resource Viewer designed specifically to view files built with the Unreal engine. After that you will need to open the file in a program called Milkshape 3D in order to convert it into an OBJ file. Finally you need to open your file up in Mesh Mixer so you can repair the mesh and then save it as an STL file for 3D printing. You can also use the Netfabb Cloud Service to help repair the files.
Once you’ve done all that you are all set to 3D print your models, depending on the size you may need to break your model up and assemble it after printing with super glue or acetone. Depending on the material that you print it in, you can also paint it or apply any post processing treatment to it that you want.
You can find more videos like this on Daveson’s YouTube channel Maker’s Muse, where he posts great tutorials on 3D printing, post processing techniques and 3D modelling.
