Source 2 Viewer vs UABEA

Source 2 Viewer is a free, open-source tool for browsing VPK archives and inspecting or exporting assets from Source 2 games. It can search, extract, and create archives, including VPK versions from Source 1. Its renderer displays maps, models, physics, and particles with real-time lighting and animation playback. The tool also inspects textures, audio, shaders, and other Source 2 resources. Maps, models, physics, and animations can be exported to glTF 2.0, with material conversion and batch export; maps, models, and materials can be decompiled into editable formats for Hammer, ModelDoc, and Source 2 Workshop Tools. Texture tools cover channels, depth layers, mip levels, cubemaps, and HDR, with image export. Its audio player supports WAV, MP3, and Source 2 formats. The graphical interface is Windows-only, though the guide describes running it on Linux and macOS through Wine; the command-line utility is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. The GUI is portable and requires no installation. Some data may be lost during export, and reverse-engineered format support is incomplete. The project is volunteer-built and says it is not affiliated with Valve.

UABEA is a free reader and writer for Unity Asset Bundles and Serialized Files on Windows and Linux. Its maker positions it for modding and research rather than general asset extraction. The tool handles textures, TextAssets, fonts, audio, MonoBehaviours, Unity Asset Bundles, Unity Serialized Files, and Addressables bundles, and supports batch extraction and archive repacking. Editing Addressables requires clearing CRC checks with a separate CRC cleaning tool. UABEANext, a newer work-in-progress version, adds docking and multi-bundle opening. The latest listed release requires .NET Runtime 6.0. Windows also needs the Visual C++ Redistributable; Linux requires glibc 2.29 or later, and musl-based distributions require compiling UABEA. Font import and export covers TTF and OTF, but font atlases are unsupported. Swizzled Switch textures can be edited, while newly added textures are not automatically swizzled. The repository identifies the software as MIT licensed.