BSA Unpacker Tutorial

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Revision as of 18:51, 25 October 2007 by imported>Dave foster
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A quick tutorial on how to unpack the Oblivion BSA's

Warning: The new files from the extracted archives will use 3.2 gb of your harddisk.

Figure 1: The BSA folder
  • Download Ghostwheels program "TES4BSA" here
    Then make a folder in the C:\ drive. I will call mine "BSA".
  • Then extract the contents of the TES4BSA zip archive, the file you just downloaded, into the "BSA" folder which you have just created.
    Note: In WindowsXP extracting can be done by copying and pasting the contents of the archive.
  • Also copy the BSA files from your Oblivion\data files: "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa", "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa" and "Oblivion - Misc.bsa", to the new folder, "BSA".

Your folder should look like Fig. 1.


Now, when everything is extracted, do the following:

  • Open a Command Line window: In Windows Start menu, select Run. Type "Cmd" (no quotes), and press enter.
  • Then write "cd C:\" (no quotes), and press enter.
  • Then type "cd BSA" (no quotes), and press enter.
    This will make the BSA folder our current directory (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: The BSA directory
  • Now write:
    tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the meshes (Fig.3).
  • And likewise for the other archives:
    • tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Textures - compressed.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the textures (Fig. 4).
    • tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Misc.bsa" and press enter, this will unpack the misc (Fig. 5).
Figure 3: Extracting Meshes
Figure 4: Extracting Textures
Figure 5: Extracting Misc.


  • All extracted files are now stored in your "BSA" folder (Fig. 6).
Figure 6: Extracted folders
  • When you have unpacked all your BSA's, move the contents of the whole "BSA" folder to the "Oblivion\Data" folder.

And that should be it.

Happy modding.



To ease up working with the command line, use Microsoft's "Cmd Here Powertoy". It adds a "Open Command Window Here" option to the context menu. After installing this you can easily open a command folder in any folder just by right-clicking on the folder and choosing "Open Command Window Here".

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe



For even easier extract, create a batch file. How do you do that?

Open notepad. Copy the contents below into it and save it as a .bat Change it as nessicary.


@ECHO ON

ECHO Will extract Oblivion files from .bsa's

ECHO Extracted files will use up more than 3 GB

PAUSE

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Meshes.bsa"

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Textures - compressed.bsa"

C:\BSA\tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Misc.bsa"


See Also