Blender Ptero Tools
A Blender addon adding full support for Vietcong / Vietcong 2 (Ptero-Engine-II / Ptero-Engine-III) 3D formats which enables creation of custom 3D assets for both games.
While official tools existed, they were limited to outdated versions of 3ds Max (7/8) and lacked support for advanced workflows such as character creation, skeletal animation, and vehicle assets. In addition, the dependency on licensed software and plugins incompatible with modern versions made them impractical to use.
To overcome these limitations, I developed a complete Blender-based toolchain, enabling modern and more efficient asset workflows. The project involved extensive reverse engineering of proprietary file formats.
The addon supports complete import/export of engine formats, including skeletal meshes, animations, facial expressions, and equipment placement, while also exposing engine-specific configuration and material settings.
An animated equipped character imported into Blender
A character 3D model imported into Blender
A character 3D model imported into Blender
A character 3D model imported into Blender
A building 3D model imported into Blender
The standard Suzanne test mesh from Blender, exported using the tool and imported into Ptero-Engine-II
Even before full animation support was implemented, I used an early version of the addon to create Koppa (2020), likely the first map created entirely in Blender for Vietcong.
The tools were developed for personal use and were never publicly released.
Key features
- Engine-specific object configuration and asset properties
- Support for skeletons, skeletal animation, and shape keys
- Full support for Ptero-Engine-II/III materials
- BES (3D model) import/export
- STG (skeletal animation) import/export
- MANM (model animation) import/export
- EQP (equipment placement) import/export
- XDT (facial expression sets) import/export
Showcase
MAT 49 weapon ported from Vietcong 2 to Vietcong 1, shown in Blender
MAT 49 weapon ported from Vietcong 2 to Vietcong 1, shown in-game
Custom first-person hand animation; player hands ported from Vietcong 2
Captain Boone ported from Vietcong 2 to Vietcong 1; player hands ported from Vietcong 2
Custom character used for in-game skeleton visualization (octahedral debug representation)
Tommy (Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven) ported into Vietcong 1
CS:GO character ported into Vietcong 1
Customized animal 3D model (cow/buffalo)
Tech stack
- Python
- Blender Python API
- NumPy