RenderWare



RenderWare (RW) is a 3D and 2D graphics rendering engine developed by Criterion Software. It was used by many games in the early 2000's and was responsible for the majority of graphics in the 5 Heavy Iron games on this wiki.

RenderWare files are used for all of the 3D models, textures, and level maps in Heavy Iron's RenderWare-based games. RenderWare uses a common file format across all its filetypes which is commonly referred to as RenderWare binary stream files. These files contain a hierarchical structure of chunks (or sections) which contain specific data depending on the chunk's type. Much of the format is described here.

TODO: List which RenderWare versions each game uses.

There are several tools commonly used by the community to work with RenderWare files.
 * RW Analyze is a RenderWare binary stream viewer and editor, used to inspect chunk hierarchies and research unknown RenderWare assets.
 * Magic.TXD is a texture dictionary editor, used to edit textures.
 * rwio is an import and export plugin for 3DS Max, used to work with 3D models.
 * DragonFF is an import and export plugin for Blender, also used to work with 3D models.
 * The RenderWare SDK itself has some useful tools to work with and visualize RenderWare assets, such as a clump viewer for 3D models and a binary stream viewer similar to RW Analyze.

Assets
The following asset types use RenderWare to store their data:
 * BSP
 * JSP
 * MODL
 * RWTX