From GameCube to Unity Workflow (EXTRA)

(Read previous post first) Continuing on from my previous post about the process of extracting models from the GameCube to Unity, there is one more piece of additional information / process which I stumbled onto today.

Whilst exploring .arc files in the extracted game directory, I found that some of these files are completely broke or corrupted. Extracting them returns null folders / files, some of which are crucial.

In my case I was missing three types of foliage; bushes, trees and grass... These are pivotable in re-creating the overall feel of Outset Island.

After doing some research, I stumbled upon a couple of users with the same issue. In this thread, the user explains they believe they have found the .arc file containing various foliage. The use states that "Kusa.arc" translates to grass in Japanese, as with most .arc files here its safe to assume they are given Japanese names. The only downside is, this particular file is one of the few that is broke. I even ripped my own copy of the game (in my previous post I stated how I just downloaded a copy instead) to see if that would work, to no avail.

So it would seem this particular file is inaccessible with the current tools available...

At this point I realised I can use the same method I used for my Rush 2049 Remake. For Rush I used a set of tools used primarily for "ripping", these are used by modders and 3D printing hobbyists. These tools work by capturing all 3D and texture information currently on screen and exports them as a scene for 3D modelling software. I won't go into too much detail as the last link (method) goes through this in more detail.

Basically, I was able to capture a sceen in-game with all the foliage I needed:

After I cleaned them up a bit, they now look great. Originally all their normals were inverted, so they wouldn't render correctly. So I edited them and exported them for Unity.

Similar to the treasure chest in my previous post, the textures were off, so fixing these and rescaling the end result is pretty satisfactory: