Collision Tags

Halo Export Scripts -> Export scripts for your 3D modeling software of choice.

Collision tags in Halo 2 are created by exporting JMS files in UTF-16 format and making some specific changes to how the material and node names are done. We can then import the JMS file with H2Tool to get our working collision_model tags. Let's get started by making the necessary changes to a freshly exported JMS file from 3DS Max. Open it in Notepad++ and look to the first few lines that should look something like this

We will solve an error related to the entire model being imported as one region and a material flag not making sense. You can fix this by changing material from this....

1
metal
<none>
0
1
unnamed

To this

1
metal
base metal
0
2
base
metal

This changes the to a permutation and a region in that order. It also adds the names of all the regions and permutations in one big list. Lets also break this list down for clarity.

(Material Count)
(Material Name)
(Permutation) (Region)
(Marker Count)
(Name Count)
(Names of permutations and regions listed here)

The final step is to change the encoding. Open up the text file in Notepad++ and change the encoding from whatever it currently is to UCS-2 LE BOM. H2Tool should now accept your JMS files without issues assuming they are valid. Place the JMS file inside a folder labeled "collision" and browse the the parent folder that you created the collision folder in using the launcher. Hit compile while having collisions checkmarked.