View NOLF1/2 models and export them to Blender without having to live forever!

NOLF2Blender opens the character and prop models of No One Lives Forever and No One Lives Forever 2, shows them with their textures and animations, and exports them to Blender .blend files: skeleton, skinned meshes, textures and every animation as a Blender action.

Open a model, pick an animation, press Export. Blender opens the result with an armature that moves exactly like the character does in the game.

What it can do

• Open NOLF 1 and NOLF 2 models: LithTech .abc files (NOLF 1) and .ltb files (NOLF 2), plus .dtx textures (32 bit, DXT1, DXT3, DXT5).
• Find textures automatically: from the game's modelbutes.txt when you open a model inside an extracted game folder, otherwise by file name. When several characters share one model (common in NOLF 2), you pick the skin set from a list.
• Assign textures by hand: click a piece of the model and give it a .dtx, .tga, .png, .jpg or .bmp file.
• Play animations: searchable list of all animations, play, pause, scrub and step through keyframes, change the playback speed. Shared animation files such as basemodel.abc or multibase.ltb are loaded automatically, the same way the game does it.
• Inspect the model: skeleton, attachment points (sockets) and wireframe overlays, level of detail selection, and pieces you can hide.
• Export to Blender:
  • an armature with the model's skeleton
  • one skinned mesh per model piece
  • materials with the textures saved as .tga next to the .blend, or packed into it
  • all animations you selected, as actions, with the game's animation events as pose markers
  • attachment points as empties parented to their bones
• Accurate: the test suite has Blender deform exported models at sample frames of their animations and compares every vertex with the game engine's own skinning math. They match to within rounding error.
• Export options: real-world scale (characters about 1.7 m tall) or the game's units, frame rate, level of detail, which animations to include, and an option to bake every frame.
• Batch conversion from the command line, for example a whole folder of models at once.

What it cannot do (yet)

• Read the game's .rez archives directly. Extract them first with a REZ tool.
• Bring models back into the game. Export only goes from NOLF to Blender.
• Load levels (world geometry). Only models are supported.
• Recreate NOLF 2 render styles (glass, chrome and other shader effects). Materials use the base texture.
• Export the vertex animation of the few NOLF 2 pieces that use it. Those pieces are exported in their rest pose.
• Add extra animation files to a model by hand. Only the animation files the model itself references are loaded.
• Use texture transparency automatically. NOLF often stores other data in the alpha channel, so transparency is switched on per texture.
• Open models from other LithTech games. They may work if they use the same file versions, but they are untested.

Requirements

• Your own copy of No One Lives Forever or No One Lives Forever 2, with the .rez archives extracted. Keep the folder structure so the textures can be found. The required tool to unpack data from the .REZ files shipped with the Game Of The Year edition of NOLF2.
• Blender 4.2 or newer (Blender 5 recommended) to export .blend files. NOLF2Blender finds installed versions automatically and runs Blender in the background to build the file.
• A graphics card with Vulkan, Direct3D 12 or Metal support.

How to use

1. Open a model with File > Open model, or drag an .abc or .ltb file onto the window.
2. Check the textures in the Model panel. If a piece has none, click it and choose Assign texture.
3. Click animations on the right to play them. The checkboxes choose which ones are exported.
4. Click Export to Blender, choose where to save the .blend file and click Export.

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NOLF2Blender is an unofficial tool. It contains no game data; you need your own copy of the games. No One Lives Forever and its assets belong to their respective owners. Built with SDL 3 and Dear ImGui.