Research: Animal Crossing Model Swapping

I recently found this Youtube video on model swapping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5ValbRsyI
It's an incredibly interesting topic, yet I found nothing outside of that video discussing this amazing find. I did see one site with pics a long time ago that was likely a result of model swapping, but they gave no detail about what they did. So we're left with just this video apparently. I want to continue this, so it'd be nice to gather interest and help with this. My main goal is for the players themselves to be model swapped, some of the comments asked this but never got an answer. If anyone knows any other information, wants to contribute, or simply just wants to show interest, feel free to converse. I also made a thread on Gamefaqs, but I'm much more familiar with this community, especially since it's mostly about hacking to begin with.

Using Animal Map I found that the editing neighbor section lists the neighbors in the same order as the incomplete list of neighbors on the video description, meaning it's the same programmed order as the numbers in the models and texture files. Here's the complete list:


Using that list, I successfully model swapped neighbors.

Then I was successful in replacing special NPCs as well.

I imagine it could easily work the other way around too. If there's a way to rename neighbors, we can have special NPCs as neighbors!

So now I tried messing with the player data. This is much more complicated. All the animals simply had a model and texture file. The player has subfolders upon subfolders with hundreds of different files that correspond to who knows which parts. This is the result of some experimentation where I tried to play as Rover.


It looks almost decent, with just an extra head blended in there. Then when the game started, this happened.


All and all, i consider it a step forward. I got my cat ears and tail, so that's a step up the furry ladder. Hopefully we can reach the end result of playing as the animal villagers. I have no idea what corrupts the textures, but it likely has to do with the many files I carelessly replaced and the many I left alone. There are too many factors I don't know about. If anyone can assist in organization of some sort, that would be a huge help. We need to know what does what so we know what to replace.

Meanwhile, something new happened. I poked around and found a program (MKDS Editor) that can edit DS games' model and texture files. I haven't gotten the hang of it, but I tried opening Rover's texture and drew an X over his closed eye. Then I model swapped Tom Nook to test it out. This is the result.
I messed up the texture somehow, but the X is there. I know texture editing is already a thing in City Folk, but now it looks like Wild World can get in on it! As far as I know, City Folk doesn't have model swapping (if it does, someone tell me) so it looks like there's some real potential here! Once we figure out how to edit the player and texture edit, Wild World hacking will soar! I'm really new to this kind of scene so I'd really appreciate some help.

i started to identify some of the functions in the player folders. Here's what I found out so far:
PBody: This folder contains the models for male and female players. It's one simple file each. I assume this is the only model that needs to be replaced, though I could be wrong.
PFcTx: This folder contains all the textures of the player character's faces. Possibly more, I'm no expert.
PGIs: All model files. For some reason, I can't view these, so I dunno what they're for.
PHead: All model files. Judging from the name, I'd guess these are the models of the players' heads. Since only the head was seen splicing over the character model from my experiment, I'm sure something's going to have to be done about this.
PItm: Contains more folders.
Anm0: I'm guessing these files are animation files. No need to mess with them as far as I know.
Anm1: More animation files.
ItaAnm0: Different types of files. Possibly more animation?
Mdl0: Model files. Don't know what for.
Mdl1: More model files.
Uki0: More model files
PPal: Textures. The files themselves are all numbered, but some of them when opened are labeled "skin", and others "hair". Easy guess what they correspond to, Thing is, each texture file here is like a couple pixels big, too small to really identify them specifically, and there are a lot of them.

That's all I can identify. I'm going to perform another experiment now that I kind of have an idea what does what.

Hey U. Flame, how did you swap the player model with a character. When I try to replace the body model with one of the npcs, it only messes up the textures of the intro seqence, then makes the game crash, when you would arrive at the city.

The model-folders you apparently couldn't identify are:
PGIs: accessories worn on the head (glasses, beards, flowers)
Mdl0+1: models of tools (shovel, fishing rod etc.) + umbrella
Uki0: still no idea, looks like some find of juggling balls

Alexius said:

Hey U. Flame, how did you swap the player model with a character. When I try to replace the body model with one of the npcs, it only messes up the textures of the intro seqence, then makes the game crash, when you would arrive at the city.

The model-folders you apparently couldn't identify are:
PGIs: accessories worn on the head (glasses, beards, flowers)
Mdl0+1: models of tools (shovel, fishing rod etc.) + umbrella
Uki0: still no idea, looks like some find of juggling balls

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info! All I did was follow the video, its been a while so I don't remember exactly. I believe I simply switched the files' places and renamed them to each other. I'd love to experiment more, but I still need to repair my laptop first. Still, its on my to-do list.