Forza Studio: Forza 3 .Carbin Resource Extraction Tool
The history behind this utility started when a good friend of mine requested that I attempt to extract some of the Forza 3 car model resources (.carbin) from the game so that he could use them in some of his renders. While searching the interwebs for any information related to the subject, I came across the XeNTaX community, and started this thread in hopes that others would join in on my efforts. Their members were quite helpful (ajmiles in particular for his initial help with vertex decoding) at reducing my time spent during the research process. Soon enough I had created a nice little utility for extracting the contents of the Forza 3 .carbin model resources from the game.
Forza studio provides you with the ability to open up entire Forza 3 car or track zip files, as well as the individual .carbin or track .bin files if you manually extract them from the archive. It also allows for selective piece extraction and exports the selected items into the Wavefront OBJ model format for easy importation into almost all model editing applications. Use the WASDQE keys to move the camera and the arrow keys to change the look direction. Right click the viewport to bring up a context menu where you can change other rendering options.
I’ve kept this Visual Studios 2008 C#.NET project open source throughout it’s entire development so that anyone can do what they will with it and pick up wherever I leave off. Since I was researching and developing at the same time, I apologize for the source being a bit messy in parts, but it is what it is. I’ve attached the two most recent builds below with source included as usual. The first one is probably the most stable build for car extraction, and the second one I started refactoring and added partial support for track extraction (and probably broke a few things in the process). In order to run this application on your computer you will need to have the Microsoft .NET 3.5 and Microsoft XNA 3.1 frameworks installed. If you have any questions or problems getting this to run on your machine, give me a shout, and I’ll see what I can do to help you out.
Downloads
Forza Studio (5.29.10) (8000 downloads)
Forza Studio (7.9.10) (9095 downloads)
Hey Mike, this is the error I get every time I launch forza studio. I have xna framework installed and .net framework installed and it still seems to be giving me this.
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Version=3.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6d5c3888ef60e27d’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
File name: ‘Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Version=3.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6d5c3888ef60e27d’
at ForzaStudio.ForzaStudioForm.MainLoop()
at ForzaStudio.ForzaStudioForm.Form1_Shown(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Development\C# .NET\Forza Studio\ForzaStudioForm.cs:line 63
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnShown(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.CallShownEvent()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackDo(ThreadMethodEntry tme)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackHelper(Object obj)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.runTryCode(Object userData)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.RuntimeHelpers.ExecuteCodeWithGuaranteedCleanup(TryCode code, CleanupCode backoutCode, Object userData)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallback(ThreadMethodEntry tme)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbacks()
WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].
Be sure you’ve installed XNA 3.1 instead of 4.0 – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15163