Getting Started
FModel is a Freeware made to explore Unreal Engine games archives. This means that you don't have to pay for it and this won't change. Its code is open and available to everyone and reusable under certain conditions (see the license text for more information).
FModel –of course– does not contain any malware, spyware, advertisements or undesired third-party programs.
Once FModel is installed and launched, it will verify the integrity of a bunch of files and folders before any window appears.
flowchart LR
A(Launch)-->B{Settings Exist}
B-->|Yes| C[Deserialize]
B-.->|No| D[Create]
E{Output Dirs Exists}
C-->E
D-.->E
E-->|Yes| F[Nice!]
E-.->|No| G[Create]
H(Window Appearance)
F-->H
G-.->H
FModel has to ability to auto-detect installed games on your computer. These games will be prompted to you if none is selected yet. If your game is not on the list, you can add it manually at the bottom of the window. You can then press OK once you selected the game you want to load.
We've spent a lot of time engineering the UX of this window in order to make the most out of it. We ended up with 3 panels, for ease of use, and to counter previous FModel versions' flaws, which were mainly based on a waste of space.
As said before, not to waste space, we bundled all navigation-related views into a single panel. Each view has its own information area to show stuff like archive's GUID, folder's package count, or package compression used. You can easily switch between views thanks to the shortcuts set under your settings.
This view will display your game archives, whether they are encrypted or not. FModel doesn't allow you to load exported game packages, but you can use CUE4Parse to do so. If your game archives are encrypted, you will need an AES encryption key in order to decrypt them. If done correctly, your archives able to be loaded will have 
next to them, otherwise it will be 
.
You can choose to load a single archive, several or all of them, but also compare 2 states and only show new or modified packages. If you choose to compare, you will need a backup file older than the state of your current game archives.
This view will display your archives folder tree structure. You can open folders by either clicking the arrow next to them or double-clicking the folder name. If you double-click a folder that doesn't have any subfolder, you will automatically switch to the package view.
This view will display packages stored under your selected folder. You can extract, export, and save the properties of all game packages no matter their type.
In order to see packages' properties, you have at your disposal up to 25 tabs. Each tab is cut in half between the text area and the image area, both resizable.
A little panel to display warnings, errors, and other information about what FModel does in the background. There is much more information in log files but less is more, so here you go. If needed, you can close this panel but we do not recommend doing so as you won't be able to see, if any, the cause of issues.