Animals tool (any animal model as a game animal)

The left column walks four steps; any reached step can be clicked to go back.

1. Animal. The game's animals by kind, each with its length: Dogs (Retriever, Shepherd, Husky, Rottweiler, Chop, Poodle, Pug, Westie), Cats (Cat, Mountain lion, Panther), Wild (Coyote, Deer, Boar, Rabbit, Rat), Farm (Cow, Pig, Hen), Birds (Hawk, Cormorant, Crow, Seagull, Pigeon), Sea (Fish, Dolphin, Humpback whale, Orca, Tiger shark, Hammerhead, Stingray) and Monkeys (Chimp, Rhesus monkey), 33 in all. Picking one reads it on the server (a second or two) and stands it on the stage in its own textures. The closest game animal in size and build gives the best result: a corgi goes on the Pug or the Westie, a horse-sized animal on the Deer or the Cow.
2. Model. Choose GLB, drop a GLB anywhere on the stage, or Generate with AI (from the bar under the animal or the Model step; spends credits as it does elsewhere). The model should be the animal standing, all four feet down; it can be any size and face any way. The generator is made for the animal (since 2026-10-13): it shows "Posed like the Retriever" with a grey clay figure of the animal's stance, words are drawn as that subject standing exactly so, and a photo of the person's own animal is redrawn in that pose first (Redraw in this pose, on by default, one picture generation more). A generated model therefore lands close to the bones before a point is moved.
3. Match. The model appears matched at once (see below). Matched and Points at the top of the stage switch between the model bent onto the game animal and the model as placed with its points; once matched, Weights shows which part of the body moves each area of the model, and paints a part where it is wrong (see below). Match to bones asks the server for the weights (from the game animal's own body, about a second for a few thousand vertices), then the game's walk plays on it.
4. Export. Spawn name (lowercase letters, digits and underscores, starting with a letter; also the resource's folder name), then Download resource. The step shows the game animal it is made from, the body drawable the model replaced and the parts emptied, then the ensure line to copy.

The game's animal clips move the legs, the pelvis and the tail root by translation as well as rotation (their bones' DOF flags say so), so a model's proportions cannot be given to the skeleton: the game would put the bones back where its own animal has them. The model is therefore bent onto the game animal instead, by landmarks:

• On a four-legged animal (since 2026-10-14): Nose, Top of head, Left cheek, Right cheek, Chest, Shoulders, Left side, Right side, Belly, Hips, Base of tail, Middle of tail, Tail tip and the four paws, 17 in all (an animal without the bones for one leaves it out: the Rottweiler and Chop have no tail points, the Rabbit, Pig and Rat no cheeks). The cheeks and sides say how wide the head and the body are; with only the paws for that, a model standing with its legs wide was squeezed thin, head and all. The tail's base and middle lay the tail along the game animal's (a retriever's runs back, then hangs); with only its tip, the middle of a straight tail lay against the thighs. A bird has its beak, head, wing tips, back, belly, tail and feet; a sea animal its mouth, tail, top fin, belly and side fins; a monkey its head, nose, chest, hips, hands and feet.
• The game animal's landmarks were found on its own mesh from its weights (the lowest vertex weighted to a paw, the most forward weighted to the head, and so on). The model's are found on its own shape when it is dropped: it is first stood over the animal (its length is the body's longest level line seen from above, so a model standing at an angle, as a generated one made from a three-quarter picture does, is turned straight; a line near Z faces +Z as glTF has it, any other the end that stands taller; sized by the mean of the length and height ratios; on the animal's ground), then each landmark is the extreme of a part of the model (the lowest point of each quarter for a paw, the back-most point above the paws for the tail, the top of the back just behind the front legs and behind the head for the shoulders, the lowest point on the midline between the legs for the belly). Two points found on one spot of the model that go to two places on the animal are never kept together: the less sure one (paws are surest, the belly least) is found again by the nearest-vertex rule.
• A turned head (2026-10-14). A generated model often has its head turned, as the dog in the picture looked at the camera. The head is read in its own frame (its forward from the base of the neck to its middle), and a head turned between 8 and 75 degrees is turned straight before the warp: the neck twists gradually and the head turns whole, then the points are found again on the straightened head. Pulled straight by points alone, the neck folded and the head came out thin. Straighten head (shown with the angle, "Turned 48°") turns it off for a head that should stay turned.
• A thin-plate warp then carries every model landmark onto the game animal's and bends the rest of the model smoothly between them. Points close together on the model but far apart on the animal would tear it (triangles folded through each other), so the warp is smoothed just enough to keep the whole model unfolded and only gently stretched, checked on the model's own vertices: on a well-found set the points land exactly; on a crowded one they land near their targets and the model stays whole. The stage shows it live; the server bakes the same warp with the same smoothing (sent with it), so what is seen is what is written.
• Match to bones then gives every vertex weights from the game animal's body. A weight is only borrowed from the spot of the body that lines up with it in the same place relative to the points: a tail lying against the back of a thigh is near the thigh in space but, over the model, a step from the tail tip, so it takes the tail's weights, not the leg's (since 2026-10-13; before, a tail could swing with the hind leg like a sail).

Points shows each landmark twice: a ring where it sits on the game animal and a teal dot where it sits on the model, with a line between. Drag a dot over the model to put it somewhere else, or pick a point in the list and click the model where it belongs; a point put by hand reads Placed (the others Found). Find again finds every point again. Turn around turns a model that was stood the wrong way round and finds its points again. In Matched the handles (Move, Turn, Size) move the whole model; its points move with it. The eye button shows or hides the game animal faintly under the model.

Weights view and paint (2026-10-14). After Match to bones, Weights colours the model by the part of the game animal that moves it: Head, Body, Tail and each leg (a bird's wings, a monkey's arms, a sea animal's fins), each its own colour, listed in the panel as the key. Pick a part in the list and drag over the model to paint it (the clip stops; Small, Medium or Large brush; the paint shows as soft blobs while a part is in hand); a part in hand turns a drag into paint, so pick it again to turn the stage. Match to bones again uses the paint: a painted vertex takes its weights from that part of the game animal alone (a tail painted Tail takes the tail's bones however close to a thigh it lies). The brush follows the surface: a dab reaches the vertices within its size over the model from where it landed, never across a gap, so painting a tail does not paint the thigh behind it. Paint a leg part where a leg took the tail's weights, and so on. Clear paint removes it. Painting in the wrong place does what it says: a thigh painted Tail swings with the tail; check in Weights after matching.

Weights. The model takes its weights from the game animal's own body by nearest surface (the Peds tool's robust transfer). Parts of the model with nothing of the body near them, its eyes, whiskers or claws, take the weights of the model's own surface around them, so the eyes move with the head. The toes bend with the paw (they are not folded into it as a glove's fingers are in Clothing). The game's clips (Idle, Walk, Trot, Canter, Gallop, and Sit, Bark, Sleep, Graze, Howl, Peck, Fly, Glide, Swim where the animal has them) play under the clapperboard; the stage turns each clip so the animal keeps facing the way it stood (in game the animal faces where it walks).

One ZIP named after the spawn name: fxmanifest.lua, peds.meta and stream/. The stream holds the game animal's files renamed to the spawn name (my_dog.yft, my_dog.ymt, and the drawables and textures, streamed or packed as the game animal is), with:

• the model as the animal's body drawable (head_000_r for most, lowr_000_u for the Rottweiler, Chop and the small dogs, uppr_000_r for the birds), its own texture as letter A, the game animal's coat letters gone;
• the game animal's other visible parts (eyes and teeth, a collar, antlers, a separate head) emptied: each written as a speck the game draws as nothing, its number kept in the variation file;
• the body slot's other numbers removed (the fish has three bodies to pick from; the add-on has one).

peds.meta is the game's own entry for that animal with the name changed: its walk and gallop clip set, personality, capsule, perception, getup set, combat info, animal audio, everything as the game has it (every hash in it is named; a few the game's strings do not name were found by their Jenkins hash). Spawn it by the spawn name. Typing the game animal's own name (for example a_c_retriever) keeps the game's name, which replaces the game's animal for everyone on the server.

• One animal a day on Free, counted with the Peds tool's exports (DAY_LIMITS.ped); keyed by the game animal and the model, so the same model on the same animal again that day is not counted again. Standard and up have no limit. Reading an animal, matching and playing clips are free.
• Signing in is required: the animal is read on the server.
• A GLB up to 80 MB (the Peds tool's piece limit). Other formats: convert to GLB first (the Converter does OBJ and FBX).
• The skeleton is the game animal's. A model much longer, taller or shorter-legged than the animal is bent to its proportions; pick the closest animal.
• Not covered yet: keeping the game animal's eyes or collar under the model, several coat letters, a rigged model's own bones (its skin is ignored and it is weighted from the game animal's body), projects (the tool does not save a project; leaving warns).

My model came in facing backwards. Press Turn around in the Match step.

A paw (or the nose) is matched to the wrong place. Switch to Points, pick the point in the list, click the model where it belongs (or drag its dot), then Match to bones again.

The head came out thin, or still turned. Fixed on 2026-10-14: the cheeks and sides now hold the width, and a turned head is turned straight first (see Straighten head). Drop the model again to find the new points.

The tail moves with a back leg. Match, open Weights, pick Tail and paint over the tail where it shows a leg's colour, then Match to bones again.

The model looked torn apart, triangles shooting out in every direction. Fixed on 2026-10-13: a GLB that stores its points, normals and UVs together in one buffer (Meshy's do) was read wrongly on the stage, and two points found on one spot tore the warp. Drop the model again.

The eyes stay behind when the head moves. Fixed on 2026-10-13 before release: separate eye meshes now take the weights of the face around them. Press Match to bones again on an older match.

Can I make a horse? The game has no horse ped. The Deer is the closest four-legged animal of that build; the Cow is larger.

Does it keep the barks and the dog behaviour? Yes: peds.meta is the game's own entry for that animal (audio, personality, clip sets), only renamed.