They can be bigger. This is at least true for "real" awb files. It is not the case for awb that are inside acb and which need to be extracted and reinjected with acbtool, due to the limit of acbtool being a quick workaround.

how to convert old mod formats to new formata .ssz?

Added emotool3 0.01.

Changes from emotool2 to emotool3 0.01:

- The "hide_part" has been replaced with "remove_part". In addition to removing parts group, this command can now remove specific parts or subparts, which wasn't possible with emotool2. Thanks to this, you can for example remove the cape from Hilda without removing the shoulder pads, and similiar things.

- Added "xmlize" function. This function can convert a emo, emb, emm or 2ry file into a human readable xml file, and viceversa. The .xml output for .emm is compatible with emm2xml (this is providing that emm2xml could handle the original binary file), but emotool3 is likely to support more .emm types than emm2xml.

Disclaimer: the xml format for .emo and .2ry is likely to be changing from version to version. For example, today I just changed the code for .emo xml's. I can only guarantee that the .xml format for .emm will not change. For emo, and 2ry, don't keep xml files for too long, after you are done with changes, convert them to binary.

Note: all functions (except ps3_to_pc, where it doesn't make sense) can take .xml files as input. For emotool3, there is no difference between a binary file and the xml representation of said file. They both get decomposed in the same abstract C++ objects.

- Added ps3_to_pc. This command can converts ps3 files to pc files. With this, models from Battle of Sanctuary can be imported. The command works for .emo, emm, emb and even 2ry files.

- Added replace_face. This utility can replace a face with another one. Useful to make face mods.

- Added extract_skeleton (this will extract the skeleton of a .emo/.ema file into .xml format) and compare (this performs a logical comparison between two files, at minimal logical change, it will consider files are not identical).

- Emb extraction/injection will not longer use "_extracted" or _"work" folders. Also, recursivity has been added for emb that have other emb inside (which can have more emb inside and so on) like those from vfx.
 With this feature (which is enabled by default, but it can be disabled editing the .bats), when emotool3 finds an emb inside an emb, instead of extracting the emb file itself, it extracts the file inside the .emb (and if it has more .emb inside, it repeats the process, and so on). In the same way, the inject command also has recursivity and can inject back again a full file tree of these complex emb files.

- Emotool3 now properly supports big endian files (emo, emm, emb, 2ry). (Big endian files are those used by ps3, xbox 360 or any device with a power pc processor like those).

- Bugfix: emotool2 couldn't rename parts group if they were the first in the .emo. This is not a problem for emotool3.

- Bugfix: emotool2 could assign incorrectly an edge texture. Fixed in emotool3.

But the most important change has been that the code has been reworked. Basically almost all code of emotool2 was discarded (only tiny portions were saved like export/inject obj, and mix parts, although those had to suffer some changes too) and it was redone again, with a more abstract design in mind (and with integration in the sssscommon code with sssspatcher/ssmins).

With this level of abstraction in the code, I can consider adding fbx with unlimited vertex support in a future version. The first stone, besides the source code change, was put the other day, the code of emotool3 is now compatible with Microsoft compiler, which is needed for fbxsdk in Windows.

Export an .emo as objs. In the folder with _exported suffix where all subparts were individually exported, check the ones called face_xxxx_yyyy. The xxxx number is the one you put in the replace face bat (but without zeroes in the left and with 0x prefix). You can preview each face in blender or 3ds max to know which face is which or you can go testing.

The replace .bat replaces the face REPLACE_DST with the face REPLACE_SRC. (Or in other words, it copies the face REPLACE_SRC into REPLACE_DST, the previous content of REPLACE_DST is discarded. )

Note that there are several faces with open eyes, and several faces with closed eyes, one with opaque eyes...
And it differs from character to character, for example shiryu has more faces than Hilda.

The face in selection screen seems to be always the 0x0 so that one is useful for testing. But in battle it is another one used. The values of each face aren't still documented and I don't know then yet. But hopefully with testing this will be figured out.

"xmlize" function is very useful when fixing small bugs.

Added tdb2xml. It is a utility that converts between .tdb and .xml. I know there is already a tdb utility, but the purpose of this tool is not only edit text (which can also be done) but to easily swap string ids.

Swapping string ids can be useful for certain character mixes tdb, where the game still uses the string id's of the other characters.
Xml generated with this tool should be read and written with a decent editor like Notepad++, and with encoding set to UTF8 without bom.

Dos it mean that we don't need to write complicated bats but only need to inject the fbx files?

Updated emotool3 to 0.041.

Changelog:

- Added a way to mix animations from characters. With this, you can copy animations from one ema to another. Please refer to the examples (currently only one) in mix_anims_examples to know how it works.

The audio tools (eternity_tools) have been updated.

New:
- acbtool has been replaced by acbtool2. This one does the same (extract/inject an .awb file from/to a standalone .acb file), but it doesn't longer have the size limitation when injecting. This should help the people with voice or sound effect replacement projects, as they don't longer need to reduce .awb file sizes (which usually involves lowering the quality too much).

- hcaenctool. Well, I had already sent this to some people with audio projects, but anyway here it is for public usage. Edit the .bat file if you need to tweak options.