CoH2 and custom models.

Is it possible to fix the Conscript Sergeant model with the provided tools?

It really depends, thing is, a lot of models especially EF ones, comes without heads and arms. They both are part of head (thats why pretty much grenadier vCoH model is broken and has no arms and no hands).

Considering tecnically all inf models in the game uses the same skeleton and same animations can be appyed to them, there must be something wrong happening not with he Cons Serg model iself, but with how its codded.

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hello would you still have the tool to modify the models of the troops and vehicles?

I hope someone from this thread is still active after 5 years, because...
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I managed to create a workaround for editing SGAs working... potentially allowing to add and edit models, textures, animations, everything whats inside SGA we can export, edit and import back

1. I vibecoded primitive SGA surgeon tool to insert my edited texture into existing SGA.
2. Wasted several hours in x64dbg debugging RelicCoH2.exe assembly code and studying places where it decides that SGA is bad and crash...

I do have coding experience, but not much on low level, so I can confirm few things but still something might not be 100% correct(myb 80%).
There are two SGA checks.

A. Before game launch, by RelicCOH.module we run through SGAs listed there and check, if they valid or not. How those checks work in detail is still a mystery to me.
B. After game launch, we are in main menu, it runs additional check which as it seems, validates signing key of loaded SGAs with some key stored somewhere locally???, if they doesn't match... BugSpalt jumpscare...

Firstly I edited texture of grenadier and inserted it into SGA.


I replaced ArtGermanEF.sga with new one, but now it was listed as corrupted in warning.log
After I find places where this 2 checks happen with x64dbg I simply patched them away (just jump over check)
and then, coh2 accepted edited SGA, allowing magic to happen
Game ran without a "-dev" flag, multiplayer was available.

Well, it was hella journey, conclusion
Can we edit SGA files and then put them into the game? YES!
Is it clean solution? No, but it just works

Cleaner approach would be to not touch .exe at all and create valid SGAs, but it will require even more time debugging and reverse-engineer/decipher algorithm which signs SGAs so they would pass validation with some key Relic uses there...

Current solutions maybe considered 'hacking' and breaking game, but everything is for modding community.
Game right now at somewhat abandoned state, focus now on CoH3, last patch for CoH2 was in 2022, I think Relic either forgot or doesn't notice interest from community.

If you are Relic employee and reading this, consider disabling such strict SGA checks to allow people to mod your 13 year old game without having to break it on assembly level