0 of 0
About this mod
This is a tag release that overhauls how the brutes of Halo 3 look and play. The number of ranks has been cut down from 11 to 7 and each rank looks visually distinct. Brutes now also keep their helmet when their shield breaks. You must shoot off the helmet before you can get a headshot. There are some more gameplay changes as well.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
What's new in v2 will be listed after the "Extra Features" Section.
This mod overhauls how the brutes of Halo 3 look and play. I was inspired by EBR's video What Went Wrong With Halo 3's Brutes? to begin working on this mod. I put in months of work to figure out the look of the brutes and the features I wanted to add to them. I'll list problems I see with the vanilla brutes and how I worked to improve them:
- There are 11 ranks of brute. That's way too many!
I cut down the ranks to just 7. Most of the cuts were to the non-specialist ranks. In vanilla Halo 3, there are 7 non-specialist ranks who all wear minor and major armor: minor, major, ultra, captain, captain major, captain ultra, and bodyguard. I cut those down to just 4: minor, major, captain, and warrior. Warriors replace captain ultras so they will appear most often on Legendary.
- All the brute ranks look the same! They're all blue!
Each rank now has a unique armor configuration and a unique helmet. They also have bright colors showcasing their rank: blue for minor, red for majors and jumppacks, white and gold for captains and warriors, and gold and red for chieftains. Jumppack brutes are red to clearly show that their strength is equal to a major.
- Once a brute's shield has been broken, you can't tell what rank it is because all it's armor is gone!
Brutes now keep certain small pieces of their armor after their shield has broken so it's always clear what rank you're facing. They also keep their helmets. After breaking the energy shield, the helmet must be shot off before you can headshot them. Any weapon can knock off the helmet.
- Brutes are too easy to kill when they berserk!
Brutes keeping their helmets when their shield breaks is the biggest way I make berserking brutes more dangerous. Since more than a single headshot is required, players are more likely to panic and get defensive trying to shoot off the helmet of a charging brute. I also made brute minors hotheaded so they berserk whenever you get too close to them. Higher ranking brutes are also more likely to berserk when all their followers are dead, so you may see more fully armored brutes rushing you down.
- There are too many brutes in each encounter. With your added helmet mechanic, the game will be too hard!
Brute minors no longer have power armor or an energy shield. You can directly shoot off their helmet and headshot them. This also makes them more unique, which is an added bonus.
- Firebomb grenades barely exist in the campaign!
Brute chieftains and warriors now throw and drop firebomb grenades, making them more common throughout the campaign.
Extra features I added to the brutes:
- Randomized armor permutations for some ranks
- Randomized skin color from light to dark
- Dark hair for low ranks and white hair for high ranks to show their seniority and experience
- Some minors have no facial hair to show that they are younger and less experienced
- Secondary armor colors
- Brutes have a shield flare when you attack their energy shield
- Helmet garbage falls on the ground when helmet is shot off
- Make armor lights use the textures made for them (unused in the vanilla game)
- Fixed broken function for armor lights on jumppack armor
- Lots of work refining bitmaps and shaders
How to Change Brutes' Colors
The color of these brutes is controlled by both color change and spec_tint maps. To get the colors looking good you'll need to edit both.
Many of the bitmaps, including the spec_tint maps, have multiple bitmaps within one bitmap tag. In the shader, a function determines which rank uses which bitmap. You'll need to use this type of command in tool to import a folder of tif files into a single bitmap tag:
tool import-bitmap-folder-as-single-tag "n8endo\objects\characters\brute\brute_revamp_v2\bitmaps\brute_body_basecolor_spec"
What's new in v2?
After the release of Brute Revamp, I was introduced to concept art for the Halo 3 brutes. I found that my color change maps happened to line up with the concept art pretty well. I made some brute tags that mimic the concept art as well as I could. I've released those tags now as well. I also carried this inspiration into a version 2 for Brute Revamp. I've made additional changes to color change maps, armor permutations, illumination maps, and more.
Around this time, Digsite also released many uncompressed texture files for the brutes. To get the best possible quality, I remade all my texture changes using these uncompressed files.
Here's a list of some of the big changes in v2:
- Stalker and jumppack brutes have been drastically overhauled with heavy inspiration from the concept art.
- The stalker helmet now has 2 versions which can be chosen in the model tag: stalker (which is the vanilla helmet) and stalker_eye which has glowing eyes on the side like the concept art does.
- I edited the bump maps and textures for the hand armor and shin guards to make "unique" armor pieces for the stalker and jumppack to better match the concept art.
- There's a new version of metal_special - metal_special_stalker. This makes the lights on the Stalker's undersuit stay lit even when his shield is broken. I decide to do this because the lights are cool but the stalker is invisible when it has a shield. To give the player more chance to enjoy the visual upgrades to the Stalker, I decided to let him keep his lights when his shield breaks.
- Additional lights have been added to undersuits and armor pieces. Additionally, the color of all the lights on each rank have been made uniform. Lower ranking brutes and stalkers have all blue lights, while Warriors and Chieftains have green lights.
- Captains have been darkened a bit in color and Warriors have been brightened up. I wanted to make the color difference between them a bit more obvious to minmize confusion.
- Captains now have a gauntlet on only one arm. This asymmetry was inspired by the concept art and also further differentiates the Captain from the Warrior.
- Secondary colors have been added to the metal on brute undersuits, similar to the concept art.
- I changed the color change map of the brute major's helmet and the major's and Warrior's chestplates to look better. More secondary color and gray have been added to the Chieftain's armor as well.
- I edited the bump map of the brute body
- to remove a crease on the brutes' leather shirt.
- and to remove the remnants of a piece of metal on the brutes' shin and foot. It looks like Bungie only half got rid of it but left it in the bump map, making the space between the brutes' toes look weird.
- All bitmaps have been reencoded without compression and uncompressed source textures from Digsite were used whenever possible
- There are now two versions of brute_body_special - compressed and uncompressed. The compression of this texture actually adds a beautiful and interesting color pattern on the brutes arms and legs. I decided to keep this for the stalkers while using the uncompressed texture for the Warrior and Chietain. But you can use whichever you like in the model tag.
- Brutes now have the correct blue-tinted shield impact effect when hit.
- Brutes can now blink, just like elites.
- The Concept Art tags require Brute Revamp v1 tags to function properly. The major, jumppack, and stalker are like the concept art. The rest are just Brute Revamp v1.
Conclusion
Feel free to use these tags as is or to edit and improve them. If you do use these tags, please let me know as I'm excited to see what people do with them. Thanks!
To experience Brute Revamp in the Halo 3 Campaign, check out Halo 3 Revamp on Steam Workshop and on Nexus. This is a joint project between me and Jordan Spartain. It includes Brute Revamp v2, Remastered CE Covenant, and more!
Special thanks to:
- Jordanspartain for making the original blend file for the brute that I used. Also for teaching me a lot about how to use blender.
- EBR for inspiration to mod the brutes.
- VKMT for their Improved Brute Shaders mod which was the basis for my first brute mods which ultimately evolved into this mod.
- thehaloguy for sharing a file with me related to brute helmet garbage. I didn't actually end up using his file, but I'm a big believer in modders sharing resources and helping each other to make better mods. I'm thankful for his willingness to help.
- Masterz1337 and others in Ruby's discord who gave me feedback on early designs for the brutes' appearance.
This mod overhauls how the brutes of Halo 3 look and play. I was inspired by EBR's video What Went Wrong With Halo 3's Brutes? to begin working on this mod. I put in months of work to figure out the look of the brutes and the features I wanted to add to them. I'll list problems I see with the vanilla brutes and how I worked to improve them:
- There are 11 ranks of brute. That's way too many!
I cut down the ranks to just 7. Most of the cuts were to the non-specialist ranks. In vanilla Halo 3, there are 7 non-specialist ranks who all wear minor and major armor: minor, major, ultra, captain, captain major, captain ultra, and bodyguard. I cut those down to just 4: minor, major, captain, and warrior. Warriors replace captain ultras so they will appear most often on Legendary.
- All the brute ranks look the same! They're all blue!
Each rank now has a unique armor configuration and a unique helmet. They also have bright colors showcasing their rank: blue for minor, red for majors and jumppacks, white and gold for captains and warriors, and gold and red for chieftains. Jumppack brutes are red to clearly show that their strength is equal to a major.
- Once a brute's shield has been broken, you can't tell what rank it is because all it's armor is gone!
Brutes now keep certain small pieces of their armor after their shield has broken so it's always clear what rank you're facing. They also keep their helmets. After breaking the energy shield, the helmet must be shot off before you can headshot them. Any weapon can knock off the helmet.
- Brutes are too easy to kill when they berserk!
Brutes keeping their helmets when their shield breaks is the biggest way I make berserking brutes more dangerous. Since more than a single headshot is required, players are more likely to panic and get defensive trying to shoot off the helmet of a charging brute. I also made brute minors hotheaded so they berserk whenever you get too close to them. Higher ranking brutes are also more likely to berserk when all their followers are dead, so you may see more fully armored brutes rushing you down.
- There are too many brutes in each encounter. With your added helmet mechanic, the game will be too hard!
Brute minors no longer have power armor or an energy shield. You can directly shoot off their helmet and headshot them. This also makes them more unique, which is an added bonus.
- Firebomb grenades barely exist in the campaign!
Brute chieftains and warriors now throw and drop firebomb grenades, making them more common throughout the campaign.
Extra features I added to the brutes:
- Randomized armor permutations for some ranks
- Randomized skin color from light to dark
- Dark hair for low ranks and white hair for high ranks to show their seniority and experience
- Some minors have no facial hair to show that they are younger and less experienced
- Secondary armor colors
- Brutes have a shield flare when you attack their energy shield
- Helmet garbage falls on the ground when helmet is shot off
- Make armor lights use the textures made for them (unused in the vanilla game)
- Fixed broken function for armor lights on jumppack armor
- Lots of work refining bitmaps and shaders
How to Change Brutes' Colors
The color of these brutes is controlled by both color change and spec_tint maps. To get the colors looking good you'll need to edit both.
Many of the bitmaps, including the spec_tint maps, have multiple bitmaps within one bitmap tag. In the shader, a function determines which rank uses which bitmap. You'll need to use this type of command in tool to import a folder of tif files into a single bitmap tag:
tool import-bitmap-folder-as-single-tag "n8endo\objects\characters\brute\brute_revamp_v2\bitmaps\brute_body_basecolor_spec"
What's new in v2?
After the release of Brute Revamp, I was introduced to concept art for the Halo 3 brutes. I found that my color change maps happened to line up with the concept art pretty well. I made some brute tags that mimic the concept art as well as I could. I've released those tags now as well. I also carried this inspiration into a version 2 for Brute Revamp. I've made additional changes to color change maps, armor permutations, illumination maps, and more.
Around this time, Digsite also released many uncompressed texture files for the brutes. To get the best possible quality, I remade all my texture changes using these uncompressed files.
Here's a list of some of the big changes in v2:
- Stalker and jumppack brutes have been drastically overhauled with heavy inspiration from the concept art.
- The stalker helmet now has 2 versions which can be chosen in the model tag: stalker (which is the vanilla helmet) and stalker_eye which has glowing eyes on the side like the concept art does.
- I edited the bump maps and textures for the hand armor and shin guards to make "unique" armor pieces for the stalker and jumppack to better match the concept art.
- There's a new version of metal_special - metal_special_stalker. This makes the lights on the Stalker's undersuit stay lit even when his shield is broken. I decide to do this because the lights are cool but the stalker is invisible when it has a shield. To give the player more chance to enjoy the visual upgrades to the Stalker, I decided to let him keep his lights when his shield breaks.
- Additional lights have been added to undersuits and armor pieces. Additionally, the color of all the lights on each rank have been made uniform. Lower ranking brutes and stalkers have all blue lights, while Warriors and Chieftains have green lights.
- Captains have been darkened a bit in color and Warriors have been brightened up. I wanted to make the color difference between them a bit more obvious to minmize confusion.
- Captains now have a gauntlet on only one arm. This asymmetry was inspired by the concept art and also further differentiates the Captain from the Warrior.
- Secondary colors have been added to the metal on brute undersuits, similar to the concept art.
- I changed the color change map of the brute major's helmet and the major's and Warrior's chestplates to look better. More secondary color and gray have been added to the Chieftain's armor as well.
- I edited the bump map of the brute body
- to remove a crease on the brutes' leather shirt.
- and to remove the remnants of a piece of metal on the brutes' shin and foot. It looks like Bungie only half got rid of it but left it in the bump map, making the space between the brutes' toes look weird.
- All bitmaps have been reencoded without compression and uncompressed source textures from Digsite were used whenever possible
- There are now two versions of brute_body_special - compressed and uncompressed. The compression of this texture actually adds a beautiful and interesting color pattern on the brutes arms and legs. I decided to keep this for the stalkers while using the uncompressed texture for the Warrior and Chietain. But you can use whichever you like in the model tag.
- Brutes now have the correct blue-tinted shield impact effect when hit.
- Brutes can now blink, just like elites.
- The Concept Art tags require Brute Revamp v1 tags to function properly. The major, jumppack, and stalker are like the concept art. The rest are just Brute Revamp v1.
Conclusion
Feel free to use these tags as is or to edit and improve them. If you do use these tags, please let me know as I'm excited to see what people do with them. Thanks!
To experience Brute Revamp in the Halo 3 Campaign, check out Halo 3 Revamp on Steam Workshop and on Nexus. This is a joint project between me and Jordan Spartain. It includes Brute Revamp v2, Remastered CE Covenant, and more!
Special thanks to:
- Jordanspartain for making the original blend file for the brute that I used. Also for teaching me a lot about how to use blender.
- EBR for inspiration to mod the brutes.
- VKMT for their Improved Brute Shaders mod which was the basis for my first brute mods which ultimately evolved into this mod.
- thehaloguy for sharing a file with me related to brute helmet garbage. I didn't actually end up using his file, but I'm a big believer in modders sharing resources and helping each other to make better mods. I'm thankful for his willingness to help.
- Masterz1337 and others in Ruby's discord who gave me feedback on early designs for the brutes' appearance.