CDragonSkinExtractor

A command-line tool that downloads League of Legends champion skins from CommunityDragon and repackages them into installable .wad.client skin files.

by jinjutwo & nylish

What this was used for • How it works • Structure • Installation • Usage • Limitations

Important

This repository is archived. It is no longer maintained and is published for historical/reference purposes only. No support, updates, or pull request review should be expected. See Known limitations for what does and doesn't work if you plan to reuse the code.

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What this was used for

League of Legends ships every skin's game data as a .bin file inside Riot's public CommunityDragon mirror, but that raw data is numbered for its original skin slot (e.g. skin23.bin), so it can't simply be dropped into a client-side skin-swapper, which expects the base-skin slot (skin0.bin).

This project automated the process of turning a raw CDragon skin into a drop-in replacement:

1. Download the target champion's base skin and the desired skin variant directly from CommunityDragon.
2. Renumber the extracted skin's internal properties (SkinCharacterDataProperties, ResourceResolver) from SkinX to Skin0, using ritobin to round-trip the binary through JSON.
3. Repackage the patched files into a .wad.client archive (via wad-make) and zip it up with the metadata layout expected by common skin-swapper tools.

It was built for personal/offline use — swapping a champion's own default skin for one of its alternate skins client-side. It does not modify anything server-side, does not affect other players, and does not touch paid content beyond what the account already owns.

Caution

This tool downloads and repackages Riot Games' assets and is intended strictly for personal, offline use in line with Riot's "Legal Jibber Jabber" policy on fan-made mods. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Riot Games. Do not use it to distribute Riot's assets or to gain any in-game advantage.

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How it works

flowchart LR
    A["CommunityDragon\n(raw game data)"] -->|skin_fetcher.py| B["base_skinsfiles/\n(downloaded skin*.bin)"]
    B -->|skin_extractor.py + ritobin| C["Renumbered skin0.bin\n(SkinX → Skin0)"]
    C -->|wad-make| D["cdn/\n.wad.client + .zip package"]
    B -.->|ritoskin_bridge.py, optional| E["lol-skins /\nlol-skins-developer format"]

Loading

The core pipeline (skin_fetcher.py → skin_extractor.py, driven by main.py) is self-contained and only depends on the two bundled executables in bin/. An optional second path (ritoskin_bridge.py) was added later to hand off processing to an external tool called ritoskin2.0-threads for extra output formats — see Known limitations.

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Repository structure

CDragonSkinExtractor/
├── main.py                     # CLI entry point (start here)
├── skin_fetcher.py             # Downloads skin .bin files from CommunityDragon
├── skin_extractor.py           # Renumbers skins and builds the .wad.client/.zip output
├── ritoskin_bridge.py          # Optional bridge to the external ritoskin2.0-threads tool
├── ritoskin_quick_workflow.py  # Shortcut: download + bridge, skipping local extraction
├── bin/
│   ├── ritobin.exe             # .bin <-> .json converter (github.com/moonshadow565/ritobin)
│   └── wad-make.exe            # Packs a folder into a .wad.client archive
├── tools/
│   ├── check_progress.py       # Inspects ritoskin_bridge processing state
│   ├── setup_integration.py    # Verifies/creates the ritoskin2.0-threads folder layout
│   └── chroma_extractor.py     # Standalone: bulk-downloads chroma preview images
├── tests/
│   ├── test_integration.py     # Manual end-to-end smoke test
│   └── test_shaco.py           # Manual smoke test using Shaco's skins
├── docs/
│   └── cli-usage.md            # Full CLI reference and examples
└── requirements.txt

Running any script downloads/generates content into base_skinsfiles/, cdn/, output/, and lol-skins-output/ — these are gitignored, not part of the repo.

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Installation

Requires Python 3.7+ and Windows (the bundled bin/*.exe tools are Win32 binaries; on other platforms they'd need to run under Wine, which the code has partial support for but was never fully tested).

git clone https://github.com/darkseal-org/CDragonSkinExtractor.git
cd CDragonSkinExtractor
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

# Extract a single skin
python main.py --champion "Zed" --skins "23"

# Extract multiple skins for one champion
python main.py --champion "Yasuo" --skins "1" "2" "3"

# Extract skins for multiple champions in one run
python main.py --champions "Zed:23,48" "Sett:38,39" "Shaco:64,65,66"

# CDragon-only extraction, skipping the optional ritoskin bridge
python main.py --champion "Zed" --skins "23" --no-ritoskin

# List known champion names / see all flags
python main.py --list-champions
python main.py --help

Successful runs write the finished .wad.client and .zip package to cdn/<Champion>/<skin-number>/. See docs/cli-usage.md for the full flag reference, naming conventions for champions with special-cased names (e.g. Drmundo, AurelionSol), and troubleshooting notes.

Bonus utility: chroma image downloader

tools/chroma_extractor.py is an unrelated, standalone helper that bulk-downloads a champion's chroma preview images from CommunityDragon, named and sorted by chroma ID:

python tools/chroma_extractor.py

(Edit the champion name/ID at the bottom of the file — it has no CLI flags.)

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Known limitations

• The ritoskin_bridge.py path is non-functional out of the box. It shells out to an external tool (ritoskin2.0-threads/ritoskin.exe) and hash files that were never part of this repository — tools/setup_integration.py can scaffold the expected folder layout, but you must supply that tool and its hash files yourself. Without them, --no-ritoskin is the only reliable mode.
• ritoskin_quick_workflow.py and tools/check_progress.py depend on the same missing external tool.
• The core download → renumber → repackage pipeline (main.py with --no-ritoskin) is the part that was actually exercised regularly.

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Credits

• jinjutwo
• nylish
• Packaging relies on ritobin for .bin/.json conversion.

License

Released under the MIT License.