Captain Callum's Zoo Builds

[Captain Callum]

Instead of making a thread for every single zoo project i can think of why not compile them into one since i can jump from project to project at random times depending on the kind of biome i want to do or even just outright ditch a project. Alright so lets get started with this. This first post will be the masterplan of all ideas i can think of, underconsideration, being built, planned reworks and finished zoos.

Anyone who would like their local zoo built, with ample references i can easily reproduce it ingame. European zoos seem to be ever difficult in securing references for hence the heavy american theme.

Finished Zoos:

• North America
  • Oregon Zoo - First of 2 major zoos in the pacific northwest. A heavy african theme on a hillside with modern spacious habitats
    • Oregon Zoo Complete - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2846189356
    • Oregon Zoo Modded (last tested on 1.12, i hope this doesnt break any rules with just a link to the workshop) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2912634173
  • Woodland Park Zoo- The second major pacific northwest zoo featuring 53 habitats in a lush temperate forest
    • Woodland Park Zoo Main file - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942725900
    • Woodland Park Zoo Modded (last tested on 1.12) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942706506
    • See development of the zoo from post 6-47

Finished but requires reworks:

• North America
  • Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2808622594
    • Major Zoo in Northeast Florida - first proper real life zoo build and requires lots of reworks to bring up to my current standard

In Progress:

• Lincoln Park Zoo - Midsize city zoo in Chicago, first post starts at #48 (page 3)

Shelved:

• North America
  • San Diego Zoo
    • Yeah burnt out again from building this zoo, glad i got over 20 new habitats in since the last burnt out. This is a really hard zoo to build and never mind the performance im getting
    • Likely stopped due to the sheer size of the zoo. My new computer is struggling is maybe I messed up the details early on in the project which will be near impossible to fix - the entrance alone is near 25k pieces
    • There is basically half the zoo to explore even if the project is permanently stopped. The zoo has at least an hour of exploration with near 40 habitats. Workshop Link - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821694470
    • A recount of the full number of habitats, not even the exhibits leads me to a number of 95 habitats. 95!!! That's way too much for the game to handle
  • Calgary Zoo
    • The only canadian zoo i want to attempt, yeah another massive zoo that i underestimated the workload again
    • I may not even fit the entire zoo on the map
• Europe
  • Planckendael Zoo
    • A friend wanted me to build this, but a rather boring zoo to build xD. A wonderful zoo in real life but lots of animals missing and landscaping work has shelved the project
    • Source material is rather hard in Europe, I'm sure I'll return one day to this

 

[Colehunter35]

do you ever make your own zoo? or just recreate? also how do you find pictures of every area of the zoo your recreating (a link would be helpful)

 

[Captain Callum]

do you ever make your own zoo? or just recreate? also how do you find pictures of every area of the zoo your recreating (a link would be helpful)

Yeah I just recreate since I can't for the life of me make anything creative. I mean I could make a creative zoo but I always struggle with the whole blank canvas without anything guiding me the way, I learned that playing planet coaster that my creative parks/zoos kinda suck
So the process of recreating a zoo is generally simple enough providing I can find enough references from my 3 main sources - Google maps, YouTube, and zoochat. My most successful zoo would be the oregon zoo which ultilised all 3 options:

Example of google maps - https://www.google.com/maps/@45.510...4!1sCljz0IWqjZ-Dyawo_1V-Cw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

• Google maps streetview is really good for getting the sense of scale, entrance area building and main paths throughout the zoo.However not every zoo has enough streetviews routes which can be a hard challenge - thats where the struggle of my older jacksonville zoo was delivered with much lower quality
• There is also using google maps looking at the zoo layout - where are the general habitat areas, plazas, staff areas, staff paths etc. Good knowledge of zoo layout helps greatly. However if a zoo is really dense with trees then it gets really hard to pinpoint locations

Example of google maps recreation for the entrance - ingame of course

Next up is youtube. Youtube can be a really good resource when a zoo has lots of immersive walkthrough tour videos as i can see from a guest perspective what guest areas looks like. Things like habitat viewpoints, interiors, food places etc can all be seen in these videos - just pause the video and there is your picture

• An example video for the oregon zoo was a wonderful real time walkthrough -
  Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrFWi--EFg&t=3295s
• basically search 'oregon zoo tour' and filter by videos over 20 minutes long and some zoos can show quite a lot of options.
• If a zoo does not have enough sources by this point, it cannot be replicated. I need both google maps and youtube to correctly portray the zoo to a half decent standard

Moving onto zoochat, the picture collections in zoochat are really handy to have. Some are high quality wide angle pictures of habitats, guest areas and up to date information of the current animal collection. I cannot rely on the zoo website alone since its rare to find a zoo website which details the entire collection at once.

• Example of the oregon zoo image gallery - https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/oregon-zoo.656/

It would be great if more people would make real life zoos as it really shows how skilled a person is at the game by just using pictures to bring a real zoo to life. Sadly I know only a very few other people on the workshop who have built successful real zoos, the willpower to dedicate oneself to complete a full zoo is another level though

 

[Colehunter35]

Yeah I just recreate since I can't for the life of me make anything creative. I mean I could make a creative zoo but I always struggle with the whole blank canvas without anything guiding me the way, I learned that playing planet coaster that my creative parks/zoos kinda suck
So the process of recreating a zoo is generally simple enough providing I can find enough references from my 3 main sources - Google maps, YouTube, and zoochat. My most successful zoo would be the oregon zoo which ultilised all 3 options:

Example of google maps - https://www.google.com/maps/@45.510...4!1sCljz0IWqjZ-Dyawo_1V-Cw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

• Google maps streetview is really good for getting the sense of scale, entrance area building and main paths throughout the zoo.However not every zoo has enough streetviews routes which can be a hard challenge - thats where the struggle of my older jacksonville zoo was delivered with much lower quality
• There is also using google maps looking at the zoo layout - where are the general habitat areas, plazas, staff areas, staff paths etc. Good knowledge of zoo layout helps greatly. However if a zoo is really dense with trees then it gets really hard to pinpoint locations

Example of google maps recreation for the entrance - ingame of course
View attachment 340760


Next up is youtube. Youtube can be a really good resource when a zoo has lots of immersive walkthrough tour videos as i can see from a guest perspective what guest areas looks like. Things like habitat viewpoints, interiors, food places etc can all be seen in these videos - just pause the video and there is your picture

• An example video for the oregon zoo was a wonderful real time walkthrough -
  Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrFWi--EFg&t=3295s
• basically search 'oregon zoo tour' and filter by videos over 20 minutes long and some zoos can show quite a lot of options.
• If a zoo does not have enough sources by this point, it cannot be replicated. I need both google maps and youtube to correctly portray the zoo to a half decent standard

Moving onto zoochat, the picture collections in zoochat are really handy to have. Some are high quality wide angle pictures of habitats, guest areas and up to date information of the current animal collection. I cannot rely on the zoo website alone since its rare to find a zoo website which details the entire collection at once.

• Example of the oregon zoo image gallery - https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/oregon-zoo.656/

how long did oregon zoo take you?

 

[Captain Callum]

how long did oregon zoo take you?

Hmm half a year I believe. Basically wetlands to twilight

 

[Captain Callum]

Introducing Woodland Park Zoo + Animal Collection

Hello everyone! For a change lets look into my planning steps and see what lies ahead for us in the next recreation build after the success of the oregon zoo. I have received an increase of attention over the past month of people wondering how exactly i prepare a successful recreation build with limited resources when i have no access to the zoo in real life. So lets get started!

What is woodland park zoo?
Im sure a whole load of people have no idea what this zoo is and why i have had my eye on it for a while. So lets introduce the zoo! Similar to the oregon zoo, the woodland park zoo is a city zoo in the pacific northwest region of usa. Considered a rival to the oregon zoo by many, the woodland park zoo is your typical city zoo with a vast range animals from across the globe with a heavy concentration on asian and african animals.
However what sets out the woodland park zoo compared to most is the naturalistic setting for most of the zoo. You wont find sprawling plazas, massive buildings or eyesore out of date habitats here, instead you will wind around foliage heavy paths which lead you around each naturalistic habitats with no clear line of sight as the zoo is designed with the animals in mind. The foliage is so dense in parts i cannot identify where staff areas are at all - now thats good zoo design

First Steps - the animal collection

First off then i need to find up to date and accurate animal collection information within the last 2 years to get a good idea of every possible habitat in the zoo and work out what exact animal the game has or if not i need to work out which ingame animal is best suited for a replacement. This is a relatively easy task however i do need to find references on youtube to confirm any smaller unnamed habitats that cannot be found on the zoomap. Hopefully the zoo map comes out well enough to get a general idea of our animal zones.

• Entrance - looking at the western entrance below the otter lot
  • African Penguin - humboldt penguins noted, african is pretty much the same
  • Butterfly Garden + also another butterfly exhibit in the woodland park rose garden which is under development

• Living Northwest Trail- Top right zone on the map which was previously called Northern Trail
  • Arctic Wolf - zoo seems to have pure white gray wolves which is a bit tricky ingame so much easier to just use arctic wolves
  • Eurasian Lynx - Canadian Lynx present so eurasian does fine
  • Static aviaries of both snowy owl and stellar sea eagle - workshop assets work great here
  • Grizzly bear
  • Asian Small Clawed Otter - North american river otter present in the zoo. Unmodded zoo will have 2 habitats of otters
  • Arctic Fox - used to be mountain goat but really want to use arctic fox. Zoo has held arctic fox here previously so not unrealistic
  • Red Deer - huge meadow for the deer, elk in real life but red deer are pretty close

• Australasia - just below the northwest trail
  • Outback habitat
    • Emu
    • Red Necked Wallaby
  • Snow Leopard
  • Static australasian bird house - parrots, kookaburras etc

• Adaptations - Below Australasia
  • Kea aviary - hope theres a nice kea model on the workshop for this
  • Meerkats - really small habitat for them, pretty poor space and all indoor
  • Empty tortoise habitat - will use red footed tortoise later
  • Empty flying fox habitat
  • Capybara - indoor small space for 1 or 2 of these fuzzy guys. Red Rumped agouti is the real animal
  • Empty sloth habitat - two toed sloth of course
  • Komodo dragon
  • Also outside near a raptor demonstration building is some bongo (lowland anoa is noted)

• Tropical Asia- First major area on the east part of the zoo
  • Banyan Wilds - I believe this is south asian themed since the sloth bear is present
    • Asian Small Clawed Otters
    • Static aviary with asian birds
    • Sun Bear - Sloth bear in real life
    • Bengal Tiger - Not sure if sumatran or malayan is actually here
  • Trail of Vines - best guess is primates
    • Orangutan
    • Siamang
    • Malayan Tapir
    • Proboscis Monkey - yet again no realistic options of asian monkeys to use. Where are my monkeys frontier!
  • Assam Rhino Reserve
    • Indian Rhino
    • Red Crowned Crane
    • Babirusa - no visayan warty pig

• African Savanna
  • Savanna Habitat
    • Giraffe
    • Zebra
    • Ostrich
    • Gazelle
  • Static small walkthrough african aviary
  • Hippo pool habitat - yes of course space requirements are getting turned off
  • Red Ruffed Lemur - replaces vervet monkeys
  • African Lion
  • Warthog

• Temperate Forest
  • Family Farm
    • Female alpine ibex - worked great in the oregon zoo for goat habitats
    • Female dall sheep - again great for sheep habitats
    • Przewalski horse - decent sized yard for horses, although its really for donkeys so might need to expand it
  • Conservation aviaries - row of 9 avairies of assorted endangered birds
  • Wetland and survival zone
    • Red Crowned crane
    • 2 pool avaries empty - swans and ducks are present here. Ill add static models of these birds
  • Red crowned crane again - white naped crane irl + a second shared habitat with snow goose so 2 yards for the red crowned crane
  • Maned wolf
  • Red Panda
  • Capybara again - a nice outdoor yard for capybara, southern pudu irl
  • greater flamingo pool - replaces chilean flamingo but not like its that much a difference

• Tropical Rainforest
  • Jaguar cove
    • Jaguars - noted as one of the best jaguar habitats in north america so real excited to build this
  • Tropical Rainforest building
    • Empty red rumped agouti habitat
    • Clouded leopard - replaces white nosed coati. Used to be ocelot
    • several static aviaires including a walkthrough rainforest aviary
    • Female mandrill habitat - white saked saki irl
  • Rainforest Primates
    • Ring Tailed lemur
    • Red ruffed lemur
    • Capuchin monkeys - replaces black and white colobus
    • Gorilla habitat

Woooo finally finished that Alright so that seems a massive list of animals to do but its actually way smaller than the san diego zoo which saw over 70 habitats, near 300 animals and dont even remind me of the piece count. The woodland park zoo is looking at 206 habitat animals and 51 habitats. Oregon zoo totalled out a 240 animals and 34 habitats. Hopefully i can refine the piece count this time around since the san diego zoo entrance was over 20,000 pieces alone

Next update lets look at how i start a zoo ingame since having an animal list is all fine and dandy but one needs to work out how to actually start without over scaling and starting at a good point on the map is essiental so you have enough space to build the zoo

 

[Cool Cats and Kittens]

I am really impressed by your dedication. Finishing several zoo projects is a lot of work.

Another good tool for recreating is Google earth. It provides a ruler to measure habitats or buildings and a timeline of satellite images (so you can choose a winter image to see the zoo with less dense vegetation).

However what sets out the woodland park zoo compared to most is the naturalistic setting for most of the zoo. You wont find sprawling plazas, massive buildings or eyesore out of date habitats here

As a European, I feel attacked

 

[Captain Callum]

I am really impressed by your dedication. Finishing several zoo projects is a lot of work.

Another good tool for recreating is Google earth. It provides a ruler to measure habitats or buildings and a timeline of satellite images (so you can choose a winter image to see the zoo with less dense vegetation).


As a European, I feel attacked

Ha I know there are some pretty good naturalistic Europeans zoos with be being European myself, I should of mentioned that the woodland park zoo was a pioneer of immersive naturalistic habitats in the early 1970's that gave birth to the trend we still see today. Thanks for the Google earth tip, I'll look into that to see if that helps

For the amount of zoo projects half of these are like entrances with one habitat, it's really hard to get a zoo to stick with me so I tend to jump around until I find a zoo that is really fun to build which is why I struggle with Europeans zoos. Personally European zoos while wonderful in real life, just don't have the motivation or appeal ingame to build. Some zoos like the San Diego zoo were vastly underestimated on just how complex and detailed the zoos need to be which has increased the project from an estimate of a further 3 months building to near 1.5 years of work left giving how slow performance is already

An idea of how unfinished my zoos are:

• San Diego zoo - 41/70 habitats complete , zoo progress barely halfway. Performance concerns and burn outs from building continue to push back project
• Calgary zoo - largest zoo on my project list. Doubt of computer being able to handle it. 1/42 habitats complete
• Planckendael zoo - only European zoo so far. 2/50 habitats complete, most boring zoo to build for yet
• Jacksonville zoo - complete zoo but entire zoo needs reworked as I find it inaccurate in a large amount of areas. This was my learning zoo

Thinking about it, I easily have 3+ years of projects to work though. So the list isn't getting any smaller any time soon

 

[Colehunter35]

sounds like fun!

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo - Zoo placement and scaling

With the animal list finalised, the next step is to figure out the best starting place to build the zoo. To do this you, you go to google maps and find the zoo:

So this is where map skills come in handy at identifying key landmarks that help plan and scale the zoo correctly because the last thing you want is running out of room because you started at the wrong point ingame. So we can easily tell this is a city zoo with residental zones surrounding the zoo with a large city forest park directly to the right. We can also see that several streets surround the zoo aswell which actually makes intial planning easy enough because we already have a sense of scale, notable features identfied are:

• N 50th street at the bottom of the zoo
• Aurora avenue north is the right border of the zoo
• Phinney avenue north is the left border of the zoo
• There are 4 parking lots on the outskirts of the zoo
• Entrances are found at the hippo lot and otter lot
• There is an intersection at the hippo lot
• A large service area can be found to the right of the woodland park rose garden

With this information i made the logical choice of eyeing up that intersection for the hippo lot. Hop onto google maps streetview and we get a wonderful resource to start the zoo. With my experience , a 10 metre wide path is about the size of the average two way street. We have a street at the very bottom of the zoo so make a long 10 metre long path skirting the border of the map to start.

Making a second 10 metre path to go upwards completes our starting reference and work beings to slowly move up. Estimates of the zoo width are marked by red arrows above which can be reliable considering the south entrance right at the hippo lot is basically dead center. Back to the streetview of course to show the results of the intersection:

Lets move up this street towards the zoo and enter the hippo lot. Now the hippo lot is the third largest parking area in the zoo but i dont actually think ill have space for the largest which is the bear lot if you look back at the first image, hoping i do of course but doubt enough space at the top of the map. Looking at this there is the rose garden to the right and hippo lot to the left, and yes i know the sign is bigger (stupid custom sign sizes):

As we can see, the newest jeep is the talk of town. This parking lot is actually my first true to scale with the exact number of car spaces, disabled spaces and even the bus spaces have been included. The parking lot is made using 10 metre grid paths with plaster floors for the sidewalks. Primitive large rectangles are rotated for the car spaces, and all the little extras like the ticket machine is from the Dutch traffic pack from the workshop.

Alright this below part of the parking is a little shorter than real life, still resembles the area well enough

 

[DarthQuell]

Very cool, Captain. Could you do the Houston Zoo? Should I give some references?

 

[Captain Callum]

Very cool, Captain. Could you do the Houston Zoo? Should I give some references?

I was actually eyeing up the Houston zoo aswell, a great mid-size zoo with a nice diverse collection. Intially I was waiting for the new Galapagos area to finish so I don't have a giant rework later down the line but yeah I can easily add this onto the to-do list. If you having any references or even an up to date animal collection list that would help greatly

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo - South Entrance Gate and Custom Signboards

The south entrance goes steadily with the actual gate itself pretty much done. Thankfully i got a tip from reddit to make custom media work properly without editing the contrast values (literally just save a copy of the picture from windows photo editor and rename it something different).

Real life south entrance:

And mine:

Apart from the entrance work, lots of new custom media has been made to make the zoo much more realistic since making signs ingame doesnt really add the same effect. So over 40 animal signs included (based on the modded version so some new exciting speices made) and i will also gradually add sign boards that are present around the zoo. I made the boards for free in Canva (horizontal signs) and Vistacreate (vertical signs)

South Plaza info board:

Animal Boards:

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo: Zone Highlight - Temperate Forest

Well sooner than i expected the south plaza pretty much done using techniques i have learned to do much faster from my other ambitious projects. Previous projects like Oregon and San diego proved challenging entrances which took upwards of 3-4 weeks to complete while we have the southern entrance done in pretty much 4 days time. Simple and effective is the key to performance friendly large zoos.

The most piece heavy part of the entrance is of course the gift shop. I rely on my typical workshop blueprints of assorted gift shop items to allow quick and easy building of an effective but largely simplified interior. I can say this is roughly 1,100 pieces with the roof lights and stacks of t-shirts being the piece hogs - compare this to my oregon zoo gift shop at nearly 4000 pieces although it was nearly 3 times larger of course. There will be another gift shop at the west entrance when i slowly move along the western edge of the zoo.

Speaking about the western edge, thats right the first habitat zone is up next!

Temperate Forest:

Temperate forest is the southwestern part of the zoo and holds most of the zoos avian collection along with farm animals and various assorted animals in basic yards. We can consider this to be the one of the more lackluster parts of the zoo with not too many highlight animals, outstanding habitat designs or general wow factor - the zone goes like this from the south plaza:

- Family Farm

• a typical farmyard layout with goats, pigs, sheep, donkey and various small animals like rabbits and chickens. Nothing really of note apart from this is mainly a kids area since the zoo lacks a children's zoo of any kind. Typically all references online show kids going wild and interacting with the farm animals, no suprise at all
• Ingame i will recreate the 4 habitats but miss out on recreating the smaller pens for chickens and rabbits. The 4 habitats will be:
  • Domestic Goat - Female Alpine Ibex
  • Domestic Pig - Female Babirusa
  • Domestic Sheep - Female Dall Sheep
  • Miniature Donkey - Llama

- Conservation Aviaries

• row of 9 aviaries with endangered/conservation focus birds. Just a row of aviaries of course, but i do like these more than the average standard aviary cages with all the nice green foliage brightening up the aviaries. Of course will just place static models from the workshop, hoping to represent at least half of these birds hopefully
• The list of birds:
  1. Green-Naped Pheasant Pigeon, Spur-Winged Lapwing, Tawny Frogmouth
  2. Nicobar Pigeon, Palawan Peacock-Pheasant, Pied Imperial Pigeon
  3. Eastern Crested Guineafowl, Red-Crested Turaco
  4. Unidentified Pigeon
  5. Malay Great Argus, White-Cheeked Turaco
  6. Common Trumpeter
  7. Lady Ross’ Turaco, Victoria Crowned Pigeon
  8. Spectacled Owl
  9. Great Blue Turaco

- Wetland aviaries

• now finally some exciting parts of this area. Here we have 2 pond habitats and 1 walkthrough waterfowl aviary. This is the wetlands area of the temperate forest and holds the most active area in the zone due to the abundant waterfowl we can find here. So the 3 habitats then are:
  • Red crowned crane
  • Trumpeter Swan - static models
  • Waterfowl aviary - static models again

- Assorted Yards

• Exit the aviaries and you will find a long row of basic grassy yards for assorted animals some of which are unique enough
  • White Naped Crane - Red Crowned Crane
  • Snow Goose - Either empty or shared with the cranes
  • Maned Wolves
  • Red panda
  • Southern Pudu - Capybara
  • Chilean Flamingo - greater flamingo

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo: Temperate Forest - Family Farm

Alright the first section of the temperate forest is pretty much done, very simple so quick work can get through these kinds of areas.I should note that the family farm is not an entrance area but rather a decent sized area within the temperate forest rather than appealing to entrance crowds - the african savanna is that but that will be a while until we look at that zone. So the map above shows us the family farm with a couple habitats serving as the east entrance to the temperate forest, this area is one of the weaker parts of the zoo so dont be wowed by much here xD

First habitat in the family farm is a domestic goat habitat which is about average size for petting zoo standards, not too small but not big either. Alpine ibex have been used since thats the closest match to temperate goats ingame

Also a look at the family farm entrance sign

Next habitat is domestic pig or rather some babirusa

Look across the path and we can see into the family garden. A brief attempt at a garden patch to bring the farm atmosphere to life. There is a field of grass behind this building which can allow guests (in real life) to bypass all the screaming kids here

A domestic sheep habitat can be seen aswell, the dall sheep love to jump over the fence even with escapes turned off. A basic shelter building connects the pig and sheep bedding areas but of course are fenced off from each other

Across from the sheep habitat we get a view of the staff building and Llama barn. Of course the zoo doesnt keep llamas but we dont have jersey cow or miniature donkeys in game

Inside the llama barn serves as their shelter. Again i just wanted to briefly recreate the family farm since there are other areas in the zoo which warrant much better attention. Major detaling in such a large zoo has to be limited and effective in use - detaling a barn is not really worth my time

And the last part of the family farm is the llama outdoor yards. Behind the yards will look much better when the conservation aviaries are built. Nice large aviary netting and trees will add character to this area.

Sadly not really much good examples of real life comparisions, hoping the next areas do have some to show the difference between ingame and real life

 

[Colehunter35]

Woodland Park Zoo: Temperate Forest - Family Farm

View attachment 341509

Alright the first section of the temperate forest is pretty much done, very simple so quick work can get through these kinds of areas.I should note that the family farm is not an entrance area but rather a decent sized area within the temperate forest rather than appealing to entrance crowds - the african savanna is that but that will be a while until we look at that zone. So the map above shows us the family farm with a couple habitats serving as the east entrance to the temperate forest, this area is one of the weaker parts of the zoo so dont be wowed by much here xD

First habitat in the family farm is a domestic goat habitat which is about average size for petting zoo standards, not too small but not big either. Alpine ibex have been used since thats the closest match to temperate goats ingame
View attachment 341511

Also a look at the family farm entrance sign
View attachment 341512

Next habitat is domestic pig or rather some babirusa
View attachment 341513

Look across the path and we can see into the family garden. A brief attempt at a garden patch to bring the farm atmosphere to life. There is a field of grass behind this building which can allow guests (in real life) to bypass all the screaming kids here
View attachment 341514

A domestic sheep habitat can be seen aswell, the dall sheep love to jump over the fence even with escapes turned off. A basic shelter building connects the pig and sheep bedding areas but of course are fenced off from each other
View attachment 341515

Across from the sheep habitat we get a view of the staff building and Llama barn. Of course the zoo doesnt keep llamas but we dont have jersey cow or miniature donkeys in game
View attachment 341516

Inside the llama barn serves as their shelter. Again i just wanted to briefly recreate the family farm since there are other areas in the zoo which warrant much better attention. Major detaling in such a large zoo has to be limited and effective in use - detaling a barn is not really worth my time
View attachment 341517

And the last part of the family farm is the llama outdoor yards. Behind the yards will look much better when the conservation aviaries are built. Nice large aviary netting and trees will add character to this area.
View attachment 341518

Sadly not really much good examples of real life comparisions, hoping the next areas do have some to show the difference between ingame and real life

your really good at building buildings!
a bit of constructive critisism, your habitats seem a little bare? maybe and some rocks or dry grass or smthing?

 

[Captain Callum]

your really good at building buildings!
a bit of constructive critisism, your habitats seem a little bare? maybe and some rocks or dry grass or smthing?

Ah these are petting zoo habitats, they are bare in real life - no grass or rocks to be mud just hard packed dirt, not many good real examples to show but here's one:

I'll say aswell I'm not the biggest fan of how bare the habitats are, not the easiest on the eye when looking at a yard full of dirt but a recreation needs to recreate even the dull parts of a zoo correctly, anyways I got some exciting bird aviaries coming up themed in a wetlands area so lots of nice foliage to work with

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo: Temperate Forest - Conservation and Wetland Aviaries

Leaving the family farm area in the temperate forest leads us into a bird only area for quite a bit. Lots of tropical and temperate wetland aviaries to go through so lets begin

Just after the family farm habitats, we reach a insect house which is rather small for most zoos. This also means it is far too small to replicate ingame with the massive exhibit boxes so instead this building serves as a staff room since we do not have many large staff buildings in this area. We can also exit the temperate forest here if wished with a path to the right and around the corner to the left - that will take us towards the tropical rainforest zone.

Around the corner to the left continues through the temperate forest reaching the first aviary. The conservation aviary holds 8 smaller aviaires with rare collection or endangered birds to show. The use of custom signs and workshop birds makes the aviaries come to life - of couse the sound speakers are used aswell.

Exit the conservation aviary and enter the wetlands portion of the temperate forest. Here we can find red crowned cranes, trumpeter swans (static models for now) and a waterfowl aviary. The use of yorkshire grass, buffalo grass, nettles and custard trees really make these grassy forest habitats as natural as possible

Red Crowned Crane habitat

Trumpeter Swan habitat

Walkthrough waterfowl aviary

Viewpoint looking at the waterfowl aviary

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo: Assorted yards of the temperate forest

So the first zone in the zoo is now complete with quite the selection of animals although maybe some imposter animals that may not belong in the temperate theme. Very much basic habitats with lots of grass, native pacific northwest trees and a whole bunch of basic mesh fences for barriers. The zoo does look a little weird right now since im going up the left hand side of the zoo completely to get the scaling right.
Having an entire side of the zoo complete means i can basically draw a line to plot out other zones making building the zoo and of course scaling it much easier. The picture below shows up the birds eye view of the zoo with the flamingo parking lot, memorial park (south west grass area with sparse trees) and of course the final stage of the temperate forest making its way up to the flamingo pool as it turns inward. The large yorkshire fog grass does look a little weird when zoomed out but gladly it looks great in explore cam

First up just after leaving the wetlands waterfowl aviary is another crane habitat, these are supposed to be white naped cranes but of course red crowned will be the residents for now. This is a pretty simple habitat with long grass, fog grass and nettles spread across 2 mesh enclosed yards.

Moving on we have a nicely sized grassy habitat for maned wolves. This used to be a cheetah habitat but thankfully a pair of overgrown foxes have made this their space.

The final habitat of this area before we reach the main path junction is a red panda habitat. I only had a single low quality picture for a reference so hopefully this is at least half accurate.

Meeting the main path for the tropical rainforest there is still a small corner of the temperate forest left to visit which include 2 habitats, first up in a corner is a capybara habitat which is probably the best replacement for the southern pudu that are there in real life

And finally we have the last habitat of the temperate forest - flamingoes

 

[Captain Callum]

Woodland Park Zoo: Zoomazium and Butterfly Garden

As we continue up the western side of the zoo, there is a gradual turn into more guest orientated serivices rather than animals. This is because the zoo has designed that basically all guest services are near the entrances rather than spread out throughout the zoo to help maintain the naturalistic feel in habitat areas. After the flamingoes there is only actually one actual habitat which is the penguin habitat at the west entrance and of course a butterfly garden between the zoomazium and zoo cafe.

The first sight we see then is the back of the zoomazium building which is a small stage area called the alvord broadleaf theater.

Real life pic:

And the front of the zoomazium building shows the entrance to the butterfly garden. So the zoomazium is an indoor play area building for older children with lots of large climbing areas and stuff similar to what might be in a science center rather than what one might expect to find in a zoo. The zoomazium ingame is a empty static building which of course a kids play area serves no function at all and only is a passing sight for people interest in animals, like the oregon zoo the zoomazium features modern materials like the excessive use of timber and large glass panels. Also the conservation grass panels got a heavy use covering the entire roof with them and detailed with the yorkshire fog grass.

Real life pic:

Up next is the butterfly garden. This is a quite large butterfly building with 2 exhibits enclosed in a fully mesh enclosed building. Lots of details of are inside with a heavy piece count of just under 2000 pieces to bring this butterfly garden to life. Of course i cannot replicate the sheer number of butterflies found in here, almost 500 of them are found in real life

Real life pic (note this was when the butterfly garden opened when it had mesh wire instead of the mesh panels for the front and back):

Lastly behind the butterfly garden is the microsoft pollinator patio which is basically a garden area which attracts wildlife such as bees