This version is outdated, as you no longer need so much softwares.

Note that underlined yellow text are links in THE WHOLE WEBSITE

If there's any part of this tutorial that doesn't work or that you don't understand, join our Discord and we'll be happy to help you.

As we begin, we need several programs, depending on what you want to do.

Yea this is not only a simple tutorial, but we can also be friendly lol, so what you need is to click on these links:

• BrawlCrate (ancient version was called BrawlBox)
• Wiimms SZS Tools (to extract and compress arc files)
• A working brain
• Python 3.8 (or higher, for Yosh's python scripts to work)
  
• Wiimms ISO Tools (to extract and rebuild iso / wbfs) 
• The game ISO (or the game disc) ; you can rip it from your own disc with CleanRip
• Super Mario 3D Land MSBT Editor (yea the 3ds was not released on 2009 and it's not the same editors, but whatever..... it works so use it) (to edit text in menu/mesg)
• HxD Hex Editor (for experimental mods)
• A 3D Modelling Software (I use Maya 2018, but blender and 3dsmax works too - 3ds max is not free) (to do custom characters)
• A Wii / Wii U with the Homebrew Channel + Riivolution (or Dolphin)

There are several tutorials on Mario Kart Wii Modding Community on how to import a 3D Model into BrawlCrate.

After you're done and know how to make your 3D Model and imported it into BrawlCrate, save it as uncompressed U8 archive .arc (we'll go back to it after).

Install Wiimms ISO Tools, and then open cmd (or run this, it's a link) in the same folder as the ISO, then type this: 

and wait. (or continue reading this).

After you're done you will see a MSM folder that has a size of 6 GB (MSM stands for Mario Sports Mix).

if you're not smart enough to know that you need to go to "DATA" and then "files" and that "chr" means character or "snd" means sound or that ball is.......
whatever, go here

Now that you have everything, you can start using n.exe

To use the software, put it in the same folder as the files you want to decompress,

or just copy it in C:\Windows\System32
and it will work EVERYWHERE (like cmd)

then run open command prompt, either by running a .bat with only "@cmd" into it or by typing cmd in the file path bar (see the screenshot below).

Do not forget to press enter

To decompress, use this command:

n [filename] -x

it will create a file "_DECOMP.bin" and you can open it with brawlbox (it is not actually .bin, it's usually a .arc or .brres really - but the extension name means nothing, we just assign them to something : I mean I can put text and save it as a .mp3 that's no longer a sound that we can hear.)

Also, here is what the software says for help or when you type a command that doesn't exist

Anyway, so you decompressed it! You can now open it with brawlbox :)

Some brres files (such as character files 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, and 17, all stages and ball models, and cmn_test.bin) have folders named External inside them. BrawlCrate can't save edits to files with this folder, so currently you must either delete the folder (which results in missing parts of the model) or try Hex editor.... because Wiimms szs tools doesn't work either

• some files are arc (and not brres), to know that just open the file_DECOMP.bin with hex editor and see the four first letters, if it's "bres" it's a brres file, if you see "U.8", it's what we call an arc file (u8 archive)
  if a file is an u8 archive, we recommend you to edit it Wiimms SZS Tools, otherwise using BrawlCrate is better.

                 yes it works with cmd again

wszst x [filename] 

then you can edit the files in brawlbox

wszst c [filename].d     <- folder name

         you can add -o at the end to overwrite if a file already exists

Once you've made your edits to your file, save the file and run the following command to recompress it:

n [filename] -lh

Now rename it to the original files name (see Filesystem) and replace the file in the original game (either through a riivolution patch or by editing and recompiling your iso with Wiimm's ISO Tools or running a decompressed iso through dolphin - tutorials exist on Google for these).

USEFUL TIPS

extracting each file one by one might get boring if you don't know you can massively do them with a bat file, we made one for you. You just have to put it (and n.exe) in "files" folder and run it.

before running any bat or py file downloaded from the internet, right click them and click Properties then tick Unblock and Apply, or the file might not work. (be sure that's something you trust before Unblocking it)

after that, we recommend you to see our
Other Tutorials

You can also take a look at How to make a Texture Hack