Tutorial: Planet Zoo Species Replacement Mod

The most advanced form of mod possible at this time will be full model replacement. To accomplish this one can follow the following steps:

1. Double click ovl_tool.bat to start the main tool.
2. Open the OVL file for the chosen species to be replaced.
3. Unpack the OVL file to a folder.
4. import the MDL2 of the animal into blender, if it crashes or fails to import correctly then close and restart the OVL tool and uncheck the reverse sets box and unpack once again.
5. once the model imports into the blender, edit the model or rig the new one to the nodes following the same conventions used
6. export the MDL2 by selecting the original stock one.
7. If you have modified MDL2 models that used a shared MS2 buffer in blender, use the MS2 Merger to merge back the MDL2's.
8. edit the PNG files as needed
9. inject any edited files back into the ovl tool and save the new animal ovl
10. replace the stock ovl with the new one, back up the old one

Note that one cannot currently change the ingame text in the Loc.OVL yet and that only the shell fur shader is active on moddable animals at this point in time. later releases will activate the ability to use fin fur shader as well and edit the Planet Zoo ingame text.