I am still busy with this http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=50346 project and I extracted the halo ring from the demo using hmt v3.5 so I can use it as in the skyzone for the map but the meshes' texture mapping is messed up?

Am I missing a step and where do I find the covenant shields and the base plus textures that are on the ground on the beach when you get dropped off in the demo at the beginning?Also the health mesh plus textures and the other pickups...Can't find the tags in the downloads section here. :(

Thanks.

Your best bet is either download HEK and either HEK+ or Moses' Editing Kit to extract the tags yourself, that way you'll be able to do that any time you want without asking people for it or struggling to find them online.

As for the texture UVs, how exactly did you extract it? You should be able to run the gbxmodel importer script on 3dsmax and that should import UVs just fine, you then just need to extract the textures it asks you to and tell Max what the route to them is so it can automatically apply them.

Things like the covenant deployable covers though are going to be harder to import as the shaders are based on two noise maps, a difuse one and some halo shader tweaking/settings. I'd go ask the guys behind the Refined project what they did for that or if they have the animated textures to imitate the xbox version.
I don't think Moses browses this place anymore but you can ask him how shaders work at a very fundamental level which might be useful to know if you want to recreate them on another engine.

Tried those app and they won't open the .map files from the demo.Been trying to get the game and Halo 2 second hand for ages but no luck.Only program that works on the demo is Halo Map Tools v3.5.

I can only open the ui.map to open in the program as the other .maps are blank in the program.I scrolled down to the [mod2] Model (PC) then opened it and selected scenery\scenery\halo which contains the Halo mesh from the main menu and select the sub-object _unnamed (0),select export button and the popup window ask me if I want to export triangles with zero surface area and I select no and export as a .obj file.When I assign textures to the parts of the mesh the uv mapping is messed up.

I have a decent understanding of how shaders work having made maps,ported content from other games for a long time into UT2k4.Regarding the Covenant shields the shield part texture can be assigned to either a shader or final blend set to translucent to have it be semi-transparent just like in Halo.

Don't have 3ds max.Found an program that can convert .gbxmodel files into .obj files here and it works but the textures for the model weren't included in the archive.Have Lightwave 3d v10.0 but the previous owner gave my program away before I could attempt to eventually collect it. :'(

Getting the content and any help will be very helpful.

Thanks.

It seems to me you're working around problems you're forcing yourself to have. You can download any copy of halo custom edition and just give it a legit key afterwards if you're concerned about the legality of it (You can buy them online now I think), you don't have to wait months on ebay to find a 20 year old physical copy of the thing (99.999% of us never had one).

As for 3dsmax, it doesn't really matter that you use it as there are technically alternatives like gmax that have their own tools but they're pretty garbage, there's also some scripts for blender IIRC but I don't know much about them. If you do want to download max, however, you can get a student license or just use the trial which should give you enough time to export the models.

IF you don't want to download any of this, I THINK you can use Moses' editing kit without a working halo installation just opening the original .map files on their own which you can find on this site.

HEK+ is a BIG NO nowadays. Don't recommend that thing, ever. MEK's Refinery or Invader's invader-extract are way better options now.