MGP21 MotoGP 21 Modding Tutorial

[BIKER7202]

IMPORTANT: Following a recent umodel update, it is now possible to export models from the game.

This thread will teach you the very basics of modding the MotoGP games, I am going to try and explain more things this year but to start with we'll just stick to the basics.

Requirements:
1) Download these tools: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/motogp-21-modding-tools.42020/
2) You need Umodel (a.ka UE Viewer): https://www.gildor.org/en/projects/umodel
3) You need Unreal Engine Editor 4.25:
https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/download
4) Also make sure you have Python 2.7 installed:
https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/

Spoiler: Bike Skins

Text tutorial:
First of all we'll start with a bike skin as it's the main thing people want to edit and it's super easy, but once you understand the process you can try with something else.

Section 1: Export

Spoiler: Export

-Launch Umodel
- Copy the path to MotoGP 21 into the text box (Normally it is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\MotoGP™21 or wherever you have installed it).
- Don't try to navigate to it as you'll have issues, just copy the path directly into the text box.
- Select "Override Game Detection"
- Select "Unreal Engine 4" And "Unreal Engine 4.25 Plus"

Then hit OK.
- You'll now have a window with all the directories of the game. Navigate to: motogp21\Content\assets\graphics\vehicles\bikes\cat001\chassis\chassis101'

If you're unsure of the ID of the bike you want to edit click on textures and then on "livery001.uasset".
This will load the first texture of the bike so you can see if this is the bike you want to edit.

It will display something like this:

If you want to return to the previous screen press "O" and it will exit the preview.

- Once you have found the texure you want to edit click on "Tools->Export current object" and Umodel will export the texture currently being viewed.
-Umodel will automatically create a folder called "UmodelExport" located where Umodel.exe is.
You can now find the texture (.tga format) and edit it!

Section 2: Import back in game

Spoiler: Prepare

Part 1: Prepare your modded textures.
Basically we need to convert our modded .tga texture to .uasset.
- Launch Unreal Engine editor.
- Select Games.

- Select Blank Project.

- Select no starter content, choose a path to save the project to and then you can name it whatever you want. I'm going to call mine "Tutorial".
- Click on Create Project.

- Drag your modded texture here:

- Double Click the texture and change the Mip Gen setting to "NoMipmaps", this is so the texture doesn't appear blurry in game before loading fully.

- Click on File->Save all. This way you will not need to create a new project next time.
- Close texture window to return to the previous screen.
- Click on File->Cook content for windows. Wait till it finishes. You can close Unreal Engine now!

Spoiler: Repack

Part 2: Repack.
Go into "MotoGP 21 Modding Tools" folder from the rar. There you will see a folder called "motogp21". Inside it, you need to create the same Directory where you extracted the file from in Umodel:
"motogp21\Content\assets\graphics\vehicles\bikes\cat001\chassis\chassis101\textures"
Create the missing folders.
- Go to the location you saved the project to earlier (by default it will be "Documents\Unreal Projects\Name")
- Then from there go to "Saved\Cooked\WindowsNoEditor\Name\Content" here you will find the files Unreal Engine cooked for you. You should have 2 files. Copy BOTH of them into "motogp21\Content\assets\graphics\vehicles\bikes\cat001\chassis\chassis101\textures".
We're almost done!
- Now go back to the “MotoGP 21 Modding Tools” folder and double click repack command.bat
Once it's done (it's quick), you will have a file called "pakchunk0-WindowsNoEditor_X_P.pak". Replace the X with something else, like "pakchunk0-WindowsNoEditor_MyMod_P.pak"
Copy the pak file you created and paste into:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\MotoGP™21\motogp21\Content\Paks
or wherever you have installed the game. Make sure you copy it where all the other pak files are.

You're done! Check your mod in game.

 

[SGT Amigi]

There are 2 "MotoGP 21 Modding Tools" because when I extracted the file I choose create a new folder instead of "extract here" but I don't think it changes anything. You can see some paks created. In "motogp21" folder at the top is the path to the modded files just as told in the tutorial.

In the texture folder I tryed both, with the 6 files and with only the .uasset and .uexp but the pak is the same

 

[BIKER7202]

View attachment 506399
There are 2 "MotoGP 21 Modding Tools" because when I extracted the file I choose create a new folder instead of "extract here" but I don't think it changes anything. You can see some paks created. In "motogp21" folder at the top is the path to the modded files just as told in the tutorial.
View attachment 506400
In the texture folder I tryed both, with the 6 files and with only the .uasset and .uexp but the pak is the same

Yep that all looks good to me, must be some issue with the script/python

Do you have any other version than 2.7 installed?

 

[SGT Amigi]

Yep that all looks good to me, must be some issue with the script/python

Do you have any other version than 2.7 installed?

I think I have python 2.7 since one year ago, because I got asked for it to use it in programming but maybe I should check if it is. I open the code of the .py file with the pycharm programm and it loaded perfectly. I will see and tell you, thanks for helping me.

 

[SGT Amigi]

Yep that all looks good to me, must be some issue with the script/python

Do you have any other version than 2.7 installed?

I had the 3.8 version, I installed 2.7 and it worked; generated the pak file properly and I saw changes in game... but not the expected...

I think this problem could be more related with the image editor and the tga files. I used GIMP, maybe I can try with photoshop. Which program do you use? Maybe there's a specific one. As far as I know about modding, seems that there's no texture or it's not "loadable", other games crash but this one just shows you the model without texture.
I have another question related to pak files and motogp modding. What happens if you have 2 modded paks in the pak directory that contain files for the same feature? For example, in one pak I have a black skin for Ducati and in the other yellow skin. The game just loads the first one it founds?

 

[BIKER7202]

I had the 3.8 version, I installed 2.7 and it worked; generated the pak file properly and I saw changes in game... but not the expected...
View attachment 506599
I think this problem could be more related with the image editor and the tga files. I used GIMP, maybe I can try with photoshop. Which program do you use? Maybe there's a specific one. As far as I know about modding, seems that there's no texture or it's not "loadable", other games crash but this one just shows you the model without texture.
I have another question related to pak files and motogp modding. What happens if you have 2 modded paks in the pak directory that contain files for the same feature? For example, in one pak I have a black skin for Ducati and in the other yellow skin. The game just loads the first one it founds?

You can use any program you like to edit the tga files, I think the issue there is that you may have taken the wrong uasset and uexp files. Make sure they are from "PROJECTNAME\Saved\Cooked\WindowsNoEditor\PROJECTNAME\Content" rather than just "PROJECTNAME\Content".

As for your second question, it depends on the file name of the pak:
Any pak that ends in "_P" will be loaded over any file that doesn't end in it.
Then it loads based on the number, so for example the game would load "pakchunk2" over "pakchunk1"

So always make sure your pak ends with "_P" and if you want your mod to load over another, use a higher number than that mod.

 

[SGT Amigi]

You can use any program you like to edit the tga files, I think the issue there is that you may have taken the wrong uasset and uexp files. Make sure they are from "PROJECTNAME\Saved\Cooked\WindowsNoEditor\PROJECTNAME\Content" rather than just "PROJECTNAME\Content".

As for your second question, it depends on the file name of the pak:
Any pak that ends in "_P" will be loaded over any file that doesn't end in it.
Then it loads based on the number, so for example the game would load "pakchunk2" over "pakchunk1"

So always make sure your pak ends with "_P" and if you want your mod to load over another, use a higher number than that mod.

Very interesting, I had no idea about that from motogp game. I'm managed to F1 games and this is completely different. To be honest I don't think I would have been able to mod MotoGp game, at leasr 21 one without your work and this tutorial. There are a lot of tools needed and a complicated process. In F1 you can edit the .erp files and import and export dds files into it, save and that's it but it's not neccessary to extract content of the pack files, edit them, then use the other program to convert files and then the repacker to pack again the files but in this process you have to be extremely careful with the paths of the files and the version of the programs you are using. You are like the Marc Márquez of MotoGP modding! Congrats and thanks for your all work and help. Hope know I'm able to finish this mod properly. Probably is Gimp because in other game I modded I edited some TGA files and bringing them back to the game, it crashes and says "abcdef.tga" (just as an example name) is not a TGA file. Then I had to edit the the tga files and save them as png, and then use an online converter to set them back to tga format. MotoGP don't crash but then it's just like there's no the TGA file needed, so you see what I see in the picture, and the place where every part of the tga file should be placed to fit the bike model but it's like there's no thag TGA file.

 

[BIKER7202]

Very interesting, I had no idea about that from motogp game. I'm managed to F1 games and this is completely different. To be honest I don't think I would have been able to mod MotoGp game, at leasr 21 one without your work and this tutorial. There are a lot of tools needed and a complicated process. In F1 you can edit the .erp files and import and export dds files into it, save and that's it but it's not neccessary to extract content of the pack files, edit them, then use the other program to convert files and then the repacker to pack again the files but in this process you have to be extremely careful with the paths of the files and the version of the programs you are using. You are like the Marc Márquez of MotoGP modding! Congrats and thanks for your all work and help. Hope know I'm able to finish this mod properly. Probably is Gimp because in other game I modded I edited some TGA files and bringing them back to the game, it crashes and says "abcdef.tga" (just as an example name) is not a TGA file. Then I had to edit the the tga files and save them as png, and then use an online converter to set them back to tga format. MotoGP don't crash but then it's just like there's no the TGA file needed, so you see what I see in the picture, and the place where every part of the tga file should be placed to fit the bike model but it's like there's no thag TGA file.

Yeah the F1 game is so much easier, I wish there were tools like the ERP archiver for MotoGP.

 

[SGT Amigi]

Hi again! I hope I'm not annoying asking all the time; after succeding in a MotoGP mod, I went deeper in the game files and I think I found the files where bike performance is stored. The problem is that umodel doesn't let me to export or it don't want to:

I tryed again with liveries to check if the program was ok and it exported them, but not the other files, maybe because they are not textures or whatever, but in the end they are all .uasset files. Do you (or anyone who read this) have any idea what's happening, and if there's anyway to solve this? Thanks.

 

[BIKER7202]

Hi again! I hope I'm not annoying asking all the time; after succeding in a MotoGP mod, I went deeper in the game files and I think I found the files where bike performance is stored. The problem is that umodel doesn't let me to export or it don't want to:
View attachment 507629
View attachment 507631
I tryed again with liveries to check if the program was ok and it exported them, but not the other files, maybe because they are not textures or whatever, but in the end they are all .uasset files. Do you (or anyone who read this) have any idea what's happening, and if there's anyway to solve this? Thanks.

Yeah those are the bike performance files.
If you want to export files that aren’t textures/models:
Click the file, go to tools and the save selected packages.
That’ll create a folder called umodelsaved (in the same location as umodelexport) and then your file will be in there.

You’ll have to open them up with a hex editor (I recommend hxd)

 

[SGT Amigi]

Yeah those are the bike performance files.
If you want to export files that aren’t textures/models:
Click the file, go to tools and the save selected packages.
That’ll create a folder called umodelsaved (in the same location as umodelexport) and then your file will be in there.

You’ll have to open them up with a hex editor (I recommend hxd)

Thank you again, I will try. I think I already have hxd. To import back in game is the same as for liveries? I mean, using the unreal engine editor and cooking the files. I suppose so, as well as for packing the filed

 

[SGT Amigi]

The

Yeah those are the bike performance files.
If you want to export files that aren’t textures/models:
Click the file, go to tools and the save selected packages.
That’ll create a folder called umodelsaved (in the same location as umodelexport) and then your file will be in there.

You’ll have to open them up with a hex editor (I recommend hxd)

Umodel creates a uasset file? For me exported the file where I told it and created the foldets and the files inside (the uasset and an uexp. Then, is hxd able to open this files?

 

[BIKER7202]

The

Umodel creates a uasset file? For me exported the file where I told it and created the foldets and the files inside (the uasset and an uexp. Then, is hxd able to open this files?

Yes you can open those files with hxd

 

[SGT Amigi]

Yes you can open those files with hxd

Thanks again, I thought you can only open the .uxxxx files with any unreal engine program. I will try.

 

[BIKER7202]

Thanks again, I thought you can only open the .uxxxx files with any unreal engine program. I will try.

You can open any file with HXD since it just reads the raw hex values

 

[Alberto Zanot]

we really need something that extract and edit also the configuration files (like cameras)

 

[Xtra-Large22]

we really need something that extract and edit also the configuration files (like cameras)

Would be nice to edit the camera , and also add new more values to editing camera in game setting

 

[BIKER7202]

I am making progress with understanding the file formats, so maybe one day there could be an editor for some files we previously couldn’t edit, don’t take this as a guarantee by any means though

 

[XIE11111]

Why can't I replace the SKY Team bicycle livery? Other livery can.

 

[SGT Amigi]

I am making progress with understanding the file formats, so maybe one day there could be an editor for some files we previously couldn’t edit, don’t take this as a guarantee by any means though

Is that also related to the uasset files and all those files that you need hxd or any hex editor? It's because even if I open them is almost imposible to mod them because I can't find where the values are stored, so it's really hard to mod performances and that kind of stuff.

 

[BIKER7202]

Is that also related to the uasset files and all those files that you need hxd or any hex editor? It's because even if I open them is almost imposible to mod them because I can't find where the values are stored, so it's really hard to mod performances and that kind of stuff.

Yes that’s correct, I’ve been digging through those files trying to understand how they are read