Borderlands 2 Gestalt Conversion
By request, I am pasting the original blog posts I made regarding converting the Borderlands 2 gestalts into 3D printable STL files. I bumbled my way through the process, but whatever works, right? :)
It has been a long while since I have looked into these files or the process. I probably can't answer any more questions, but would be happy to host more information for others if you find better ways to do this.
SMG (zip) Snipers (zip) Google doc that breaks down the mesh layers.
For anyone who has tried ripping the 3D models from borderlands they will know the problems with getting it to work. I will outline the process I used to successfully get the SMG gun models. The same method works for others but I haven’t put the time in to do it for other models yet. Skip to the bottom to just download them.
The files can be downloaded as a zip here.
- Download UModel
- Place the the umodel files in your borderlands directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Borderlands 2)
- Run umodel.exe and locate the ‘startup’ folder. Extract that. Close umodel.
- Open the file location C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Borderlands 2\UmodelExport\Startup\SkeletalMesh3 and you will see the gun models there. Of interest, I copied GestaltDef_SMG_GestaltSkeletalMesh.psk to my desktop for fast opening as I went through different software trying how to best work with it.
- Download/open Autodesk Maya (if you don’t have it, like I did not, hopefully you can get the student version from their website for free like I did). I used Maya LT 2015.
- Download ActorXImporteer for Maya as a plugin. Move the downloaded plugin file into Maya’s directory’s plugin folder.
- Open Maya, under Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-In Manager click browse and locate/select the downloaded plugin file (not the whole folder!). Refresh the plug-in manager and check loaded and auto-load. Close the manager. You may need to restart Maya (I can’t recall). Then go to File > Import… and select the psk file.
- Separate the meshes. To do this, click on the item in the outliner. Go to Mesh>Separate in the toolbar. See pictures below for sequence. (Thanks to rayzen88 for letting me know I skipped over this part and providing pictures for reference)
- In Maya you will go to window > outliner to see each individual poly / mesh. There were 2226 polys to sort for the SMG’s. You will see them all overlapped to start.MAYA_open1MAYA_Window-Outliner
- Now select all of the polys from the outliner and add them to a new layer (in the display box). This will allow us to sort the parts by layer and toggle visibility as we go.
- I also had to go the ‘Show’ menu and select none, and then ‘Show’ > ‘Polygons’ only (if you have two branches in the outliner, both with a list of all the polys then delete one if you need to). This way only the ones in the layer will be visible. Check and uncheck the visibility next to the layer to confirm that this works. Comment below if you have trouble with this. It took some playing with to get working for me since Maya was new to me.
- Starting was daunting but what I did was select (arbitrarily) poly 1 from the outliner and added it to a new layer (automatically takes it out of our first layer).
- Then I made the first layer (named ‘unidentified’) invisible.
- Figuring out that the parts were at least in groups in the outliner, I took the first hundred and added them to the new layer and visually checked to see if they looked like they belonged together.
- I continued adding parts until I decided they no longer matched, at which point I would start the next layer. Eventually I was able to sort them out into their own unique layers as I will share below.Maya_split
A google doc detailing the splitting of the polys can be viewed here. I updated it as I went and will continue adding other guns as I complete them. The current table is posted below.
| SMG Poly # | Body | Barrel | Stock | Grip | Sights | Mod |
| 1-177 | Bandit | |||||
| 178-254 | Tediore | |||||
| 255-369 | Bandit | |||||
| 370-408 | Dahl | |||||
| 409-446 | Maliwan | |||||
| 447-468 | Hyperion | |||||
| 469-564 | Tediore | |||||
| 565-641 | Bandit | |||||
| 642-681 | Dahl | |||||
| 682-726 | unknown | |||||
| 727-758 | melee | |||||
| 759-814 | accuracy | |||||
| 815-950 | Dahl | |||||
| 951-1032 | Hyperion | |||||
| 1033-1192 | Maliwan | |||||
| 1193-1521 | Tediore | |||||
| 1522-1574 | Bandit | |||||
| 1575-1608 | Dahl | |||||
| 1609-1642 | Hyperion | |||||
| 1643-1656 | Maliwan | |||||
| 1657-1690 | Bandit | |||||
| 1691-1740 | Dahl | |||||
| 1741-1771 | Hyperion | |||||
| 1772-1775 | Maliwan | |||||
| 1776-1784 | Tediore | |||||
| 1785-1832 | Tediore | |||||
| 1833-1874 | Dahl | |||||
| 1875-1938 | Hyperion | |||||
| 1939-1962 | Maliwan | |||||
| 1963-2041 | Tediore | |||||
| 2042-2082 | Bandit | |||||
| 2083-2218 | E-Tech | |||||
| 2219-2226 | Knife |
I haven’t quite figured out how to export high quality STL files. I would like to print them on my 3D printer but Repetier Host is telling me they aren’t watertight. And this may just be because they were meant for animation where the rules for edge contacts is different for printing. If anyone knows how to fix this or turn the files into solids that I can edit in Inventor, please let me know!
Additionally, you will find that models are not matched well to human hand geometry.
SMG (zip) Snipers (zip) Google doc that breaks down the mesh layers.
As I go through and update this page, if anyone wants me to post any other work in one central location, let me know in any way. A few people have reached out to me via instructables. That is a good way. Look up user OnyxIbex. It will at least consistantly send me an email that wont look like spam.
Questions?
To get in touch, reach out through platforms like instructables.