FiggleFX

FiggleFX is a tool forked from HydraX by Scobalula that decompiles and exports effects from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Black Ops 4 and Black Ops Cold War.

It rips effects, lens flares, beams and screen filters out of the running game and writes them back out as editable source files for the BO3 mod tools.

Game	Pool	Output
Black Ops 3 (T7)	fx, klf, beam, postfxbundle	.efx (iwfx 3), .klf, beam and postfx bundle defs as .gdt
Black Ops 4 (T8)	fx, klf, beam, postfxbundle	.efx ported to BO3, .klf, beam and postfx bundle defs as .gdt
Black Ops Cold War (T9)	fx, klf, beam, postfxbundle	.efx ported to BO3, .klf, beam and postfx bundle defs as .gdt

Export options,

Option	Effect
Keep paths	write each effect into its folder path under fx\, the path it installs to
Asset list	also write <name>_assets.txt, the materials, models, effects and sound aliases each effect references
Hash names	how a BO4 / Cold War name that isn't in the dictionaries is spelled, Saluki or Greyhound
Check for new hashes on start	pull new names from a list of hashes when FiggleFX starts (Sync Now does it on demand). Every name is verified against the games' own asset ids before it is used

Black Ops 4 and Cold War name assets by hash, so anything the dictionaries don't cover is written as a placeholder like material_4674c74919cd08f7. Set Hashes to whichever tool you rip the referenced materials, images and models with, and the names line up on both sides.

Radiant only renders effect materials whose name starts with gfx, so hash-named materials referenced by an effect are written into the .efx as gfx8_material_<hash> and the material must be set up in APE under that name. The asset list keeps the raw name and notes the rename beside it (material_<hash> -> gfx8_material_<hash>). Materials that belong to models keep their normal names.

Requirements

• Windows x64, .NET Framework 4.8
• Black Ops 3: Steam or Windows Store. Black Ops 4: the SP executable (blackops4.exe), retail or the Project BO4 / Shield client. Black Ops Cold War: the Steam executable (BlackOpsColdWar.exe)
• Run as administrator, since reading another process's memory needs a full-access handle
• Load the map you want first: assets only exist in memory for loaded zones, so the frontend gives you frontend effects

Installing what you rip

Exports land in exported_files\<game>\ (fx\, lensflares\, beams\ and postfxbundles\ subfolders), but have to go back in at the right path:

File	Goes in
.efx	%TA_TOOLS_PATH%share\raw\fx\<effect path>.efx
.klf	%TA_TOOLS_PATH%share\raw\lensflares\<name>.klf
.gdt	%TA_TOOLS_PATH%source_data\<name>.gdt

An effect's asset name is its path, and exports keep it, so blood/fx_blood_decal_impact_ground is written to fx\blood\fx_blood_decal_impact_ground.efx and belongs at share\raw\fx\blood\fx_blood_decal_impact_ground.efx. Turning off Keep paths exports every effect flat under its leaf name instead.

Every material, image and model an effect or flare references must exist in the mod tools first, or Radiant fails quietly: emitters draw nothing, a missing flare texture draws a white square. Rip that art separately (Greyhound or Saluki) and set it up in APE. <name>_assets.txt is the checklist.

Known limitations

• Both: emitter names aren't stored in compiled data, so emitters are labelled by index. atlasFps > 255 and partial atlas grids are destroyed by the game's own compiler and cannot be recovered.
• BO3: dynamicLight2 emitters are reconstructed including the embedded Radiant lightdef (type, colour, radius, falloff, fov and friends, ~99% of key values exact); only shadowmapScale, the culling distances and a SPOT light's angles stay at template defaults.
• BO4: element type 12 is new to BO4 and has no T7 counterpart, so those emitters are skipped in the .efx. BO4 compiles an embedded dynamicLight2 lightdef down to its baked runtime form: the radius and light colour are recovered, the rest of the block is written at OMNI defaults. computeVisuals, a |dup twin of the primary material, is dropped, which is lossless.
• Beams: a beam def GDT carries the material, effects, size, color, timing, curve type, shape, UV mode and waveform values. T8's width/colour curves have no BO3 equivalent and are flattened to their base values, and the collision settings aren't located in the compiled data yet, so they stay at GDF defaults. Beam materials are often hash-named until the dictionaries grow.
• Screen filters: a postfx bundle GDT carries every stage, its filter material and its animated shader constants. BO3 bundles are exact. BO4 bakes its constants down to keyframe tracks, and 86% of those rebuild exactly as BO3 curves; the rest are values the BO3 format cannot express and are noted in the <name>_tracks.txt written beside the GDT.
• Lens flares: positions/colour-depth fade distances, max angle and rotation seeds live in runtime buffer objects, not in the flare def, and are written at their defaults (~85% of keys are exact). The checksum is written as 0, which Radiant accepts.

License and credits

GPL-3.0, inherited from HydraX. See LICENSE.

• HydraX by Scobalula: the base tool, attach/pool/export scaffolding
• Greyhound by Scobalula: BO4 pool signatures, the BO3FxEffectDef header layout
• atian-cod-tools and HashIndex by ate47: the T8 pool table, DB_LoadXFile offsets, hash dictionaries
• hash-slinging-slasher by KingslayerKyle: Additional hash directories
• Project BO4 / Shield: the client this was developed against
• The T7/T8 layout maps were reversed by diffing compiled memory against the ~10k .efx sources that ship with the BO3 mod tools