What did you do in Planet Zoo today?

[Hugo98]

I haven't done much in my zoo lately, just a little bit of planting and landscaping in the empty areas between the habitats (which is also important though).
Here's an overview of Jardim Zoologico so far, I really like how it slowly comes together and I'm convinced that I can finish this project this year which would be my first finished project in PZ

You can see the Australian area with the koala house on the left (with the green roof) and the sea lion area on the far right. Above the sea lion area I'm planning to build a great ape house for gorillas and chimps with a night house under it (well, let's see if this works). Above the Australian area, the big highlight - a pair of giant pandas - will get a modern habitat, joined by smaller Asian animals in separate enclosures. The hill area in the back will be home to lions and tigers. I plan to add some other animals like flamingos, pygmy hippos, tortoises and smaller primates as filler animals in between the different main areas. So still quite some work to do but I try to keep the zoo on a smaller site.

 

[Captain Callum]

I haven't done much in my zoo lately, just a little bit of planting and landscaping in the empty areas between the habitats (which is also important though).
Here's an overview of Jardim Zoologico so far, I really like how it slowly comes together and I'm convinced that I can finish this project this year which would be my first finished project in PZ

You can see the Australian area with the koala house on the left (with the green roof) and the sea lion area on the far right. Above the sea lion area I'm planning to build a great ape house for gorillas and chimps with a night house under it (well, let's see if this works). Above the Australian area, the big highlight - a pair of giant pandas - will get a modern habitat, joined by smaller Asian animals in separate enclosures. The hill area in the back will be home to lions and tigers. I plan to add some other animals like flamingos, pygmy hippos, tortoises and smaller primates as filler animals in between the different main areas. So still quite some work to do but I try to keep the zoo on a smaller site.

Sounds a wonderful plan , although a little skeptical on how a night house would work right under 2 likely large habitats. It could work but it would be some very difficult landscaping and pathing

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

After finding a good grove with the lemures yesterday, i finished of the rough hull of the tropical house and started working on what will be the out door area of the siamangs, lemures and fallow deer, which chare an outdoor enclosure with the gibbons, substituting an asian deer species like the axis or samba.
But what i spend most work on today was actually the indoor gibbon enclosure and i gotta say, i really love it. Sadly its hard to capture on photos due to the glass and having viewingspots where you got to move the camera around a bit to see everything, but i got some screens anyways.

Coming from the main entrance of the building and moving past the indoor holding of the pigmy hippo you move into the second entry point of the main tropical hall, where you can findsiamangs on the right, lemures in front and not visible armadillos on the left. If you go left you will be right at the galapagos tortoise enclosure with the butterflies, spectacle caimans and the otters, while heading right leads you to a not yet in place door letting you pass outside through a little entrance/airlock.

The inside habitat of the gibbons is a bit claustrophobic, being stuffed full with climbing possibilitys. The opening in the wall is sufficent enough to let them move independently in and outside, which sadly means that they spend 99,9% of their time outside, so i actually might close that off and trap a third and maybe also fourth one inside. Im also quite sure that all the decoration stongly limited their ability to brachiate indoors, if they can do it at all, which is sad but in the end its looks > functionality eventhough i might try to tweak it here and there.

Lastly a little overview of my zoo.
I havent done one of those in a long time and its really fun to see how it evolved.
I really did some fast, frequent and atleast imo highquality building, as everything right of the house with the white ceiling and the main central path has been newly build this month, while also starting to rework the older habitats to bring them to my new standard, with one complete so far and the rest...well, yeah
Im currently very happy and having a ton of fun with the game and my progress shows it as i coverd about the equivalent of half the area i build in over a year in just a month with far higher quality habitats.
Lets just hope that this continues and a few months to a year i might actually have a finished zoo on my hands.
Currently the rough plan is to loop around the lower right side to the entrance, propaply deleting the old placeholder staff area and maybe even the rather ugly entrances while im at it, eventhough i really help planet entrance. Once all of that is finished, i should have around a quarter to a third of the zoo finished, while also leaving room behind the tropical house to build more in the future if i feel like it.
Going hand in hand with that i wanna try my hands (what a handy sentence) on 2 major staff areas, one in the lower right between the gibbon and waterbuffallo habitat asswell as the lower left behind next to the prezwalski horse habitat..

For some more sketchy planning, heres where id love your idears. These plans are limited to what ive allready started with the savanah, lions, lemures and fallow deer, what i want to do in the near future with bonobos as my next planned hapitat to work on as well as a play area and then after that we got what propaply will be an ungulate/red kangaru enclosure and the green spaces where 1 or 2 habitats will go but i just have no clue yet what could go there, suggestions appreciated.
Lower left the next two habitats besides finishing of the prez horse will be a black bear enclosure linked to the dhole enclosure where both species will live together but also be able to be seperated in an upper or lower chunk and left of the prez horses will be besides a staff area propaply asian ungulates, which we do not have right now as imo a top down valley view works best for those. Might also use indian rhinos, but we will see, generally waiting with the lower left corner till we get some dlc containing animals from temperate asia, with especally the pieres david deer being a no brainer to put there. I allready have build an implied habitat for them before, id love to do the real deal.

And thats it!
Rather long post but i personally really enjoy these planning posts as its interesting to see other people idears suggestions.
I got a lot of work before me but ngl, seeing this all with the rough sketches drawn in its really calming as 5-6 habitats look like a much less daunting task, especally now that i cranked out 4 mostly finished habitats + a few more with the rough outlines allready that just need 1 or 2 sessions of decorating in just a month.
But no matter what, im just gonna enjoy this journey and im excited to see how my zoo will look in a month from now ^^

 

[Hugo98]

Sounds a wonderful plan , although a little skeptical on how a night house would work right under 2 likely large habitats. It could work but it would be some very difficult landscaping and pathing

Yes, I agree. It will be difficult, so maybe I just build the night house behind the great ape house but still lower than it, so visitors go downstairs and have the illusion of it being under the other building

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Got a smaller update for today, i prettied the surroundings of the tortoise habitat up a bit, with it being pretty much ready to sail.

Not really anything special, but it does look nice.
I also started a larger project of mulching out most of the greenery and filler spaces, aswell as putting down conversation blanks into the ground to imitate the very pretty staff variant but being shapeable in whatever way i want while also keeping the pretty tree trunk path. That will propaply be the most annoying part of this build, but hey im sure it will make everything look much nicer in the end.
For now i started along this staff path with just a few, but i hopefully will dedicate an entire session to spreading them out across my tropical house. Now i only need to make a custom sign (where i want to experiment a bit to make smaller ones) and continue the mulching, planting and planking along the tortoise habiatat and it will be smoothly finished.

 

[DarthQuell]

Howdy y'all. Welcome to another update from the WZO. We have begun our low-mid budget zoo in New Mexico. We have begun building The Outback, a wonderful little piece from the Land Down Under:

A smallish section with 4 habitats, 2 terrariums, a restaurant, and 2 restrooms (dunnies)...

Red-necked wallabies. Adorable little jumpers. We have enough room for a mob of about 15 adults in here...

Red kangaroos. Lovely hippety hoppers. We can house a mob of about 10 in here...

Next up, in front of the kangaroos, we have Barb's Barbeque, a special fusion of Australian and Texan barbeque...

Emus. We had to expand the original enclosure a bit for more space and comfort...

The bridge over their enclosure...

Wombats and their little area, as well. They are quite popular with guests...

And finally, our little cave building, housing common death adders and Eastern blue-tongue lizards...

One of our many staff centers...

We hope y'all enjoyed this mini-update of our next WZO addition. We can't wait to open Moonshine Oasis Zoo for the general public to see (yes, we have guests, but these are exclusive members who have access to enter the zoo as it builds up. Pretty soon, this zoo will be open to everyone and only at night)...

Next up: The Sahara...

 

[Captain Callum]

Alright im not lying to say this is my first attempt at an island habitat. Overgrown weeds, a bamboo climbing structure and ravenous lemurs that throw themselves off the trees all day long. No shelter for the poor lemurs although they barely seem to sleep anyways - joy of sandbox .

Duckweed (or similar) is perfectly recreated by using the periwinkle leaves flipped upside down. The periwinkle leaves are not a hard object meaning animals can swim right through them - a wonderful addition to any realistic alligator habitat

 

[wda1250]

Made a tropical house with all the features- birds, frogs, snakes, and indoor habitats all fit into one impressive tropical house. Im amazed it only took 1100 pieces to build this

View attachment 343474

View attachment 343475

View attachment 343476

share your secrets - building one of these is on my bucket list for my sandbox project!!

 

[Captain Callum]

share your secrets - building one of these is on my bucket list for my sandbox project!!

Alright then, ill try my best to highlight the building process:

Workshop additions:

• dome roof (removed from this habitat) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2526212130
• habitat climbing frame - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2596803699
• all the birds came from authors like Drac, among others. Just type the bird into the workshop and hope it is part of one of the workshop packs

Building Shell:

What i did was place the dome roof first at a suitable height. I then built 5 metre tall walls (i used the default color plaster walls) in the shape the building is, remember you need a large building to fit in multiple habitats , paths and ideally a small staff area aswell. In my case i also added glass roofs for the habitats aswell. Finally large primitive flat rectangles colored a dull white are used for roofing. Basic but very effective as i want a realistic roof that can be merged with all the angles seamlessly (you cant do that with ingame roofs). You can also leave the roof off for now if you dont want to work in an indoor space
The staff area is largely comestic of course with only a tiny portion being the actual staff area to the right of the picture, this is the jaguar keeper building which holds paths to the coati/raccoon and jaguar habitats along with a staff room and keeper hut. The comestic staff decorations are animal doors and metal staff doors from the doors/windows menu and of course the larger modern windows the windows

Entrance:

Simple enough entrance to do here. One way glass that has a blue/green color with metal beams for the windows. Normal glass panels for the door with more metal beams, one of the brackets for the door handle and primitive rectangles for the sign that hides an australia custom sign for the text. Inside the entrance holds a tropical plant room made with tropical rock cladding, add mulch and then flat crowberry bush. Decorate with tropical plants. The vines that connect the building from the jaguar habiat are the large south american vines with 3 of them bunched together to make them look larger. The rockwork to the left is aquatic faux rock.

Lets step inside:

This is where it gets hard so lets bulletpoint the steps here:

• First make your general path, it is 5 metres wide. The actual path is then topped with plaster floor (just above the path and colored to the gray path) to hide the rough path shape to make it look much better
• Tropical rock cladding and faux tree trunks make the border decorations, again color the faux tree to a nice tropical brown color. Tropical plant decorations should be used throughout
• Roof is made of bamboo floor, the lights are from some gift shop pack from the workshop which i cant remember which
• Indoor lighting is done by the new world spotlights on a dull white, lower these under the floor and position right to get the best light. You will need many of these for the correct lighting i got - see picture where each spotlight provides a different area

• The static aviaries are covered by either a mesh panel from the path menu or a habitat glass barrier. You can raise the terrain a tiny bit and flatten it for a realistic aviairy surface. Decorate sparsely with tropical plants and any aviary items you can find on the workshop if wished. Bird knowledge is good for the amount of birds in an aviary if doing this
• This is sandbox so of course disable animals needs, shelter, animal dying. Why? well that coati/raccoon habitat is barely 100m2 for a realistic size rather than the insane outdoor spaces required like the orginal clouded leopard needed in here

• Faux tree branches rotated into each form a nice textured wall, custom media is the rainforest background and that bamboo climbing frame serves our animals enrichment. A decently planted grassy floor to mimic a rainforest keeps the animals happy enough although we cant provide shelter for them, well it is indoors anyways. Of course we got a glass barrier, metal beams and tropical rocks for the barrier decoration. Faux tree trunks on both sides create a nice environment.
• To prevent guests from walking through the faux trees and rocks, place those green and black guest barriers from the security menu inside the rocks. Ensure you got a wide enough path so guests dont get trapped of course

• We got 2 turtle exhibits and 2 snake exhibits up next. Easy enough to deocate with tropical rocks and faux trees again. Hide the middle barrier to make it look like one big exhibit. Custom media of course makes animal signs much better
• The wooden barrier in the back is made from wooden round roles and bamboo rope holding stuff - whatever its called xD
• We turn a corner and the floor changes to an elevated floor as the monkey habitats are coming up - lower the terrain and make an elevated path with no barriers/fences. Connect to the ground path and then change the floor to horizontal wood

• Use that wooden post as a basic but effective barrier for the rest of the tropical house. Plaster walls to the right hides a staff room and keeper hut. First up is another static aviary, this time holding a small toucan (aracari). Following is 2 frog exhibits, again faux tree trunks made the decorations nice and easy

• First monkey habitat features many of the same features to keep the tropical house consistant. Custom media screens, faux tree branch walls, glass barrier with metal beams, tropical plants with a palm tree in here and the trusty bamboo climbing frame
• The last area before the main aviary features a larger second monkey habitat, 2 more static avairies and a decent sized toucan avairy all using custom media walls, tree trunks and tropical plants.

Walkthrough Rainforest Aviary:

This is the main highlight of the tropical house, we may not have free flying birds in here but it is still a wow attraction in the tropical house.

• White plaster walls form the circle around the dome roof. Lower the ground quite a bit and fill with tropical plants and trees
• the path is an elevated path with australia logs for supports, wooden round poles and bamboo rope holdings again. Planet zoo rope is used for the rope barrier
• have ambient speakers with the birds in here for the best environment, i used the south america speakers throughout the rest of the tropical house. Lower these into the ground so you dont see them, just have them right under the path
• The path turns a corner and shortly exits the aviary back to outside

Anything specific you need any details on how to do, let me know

 

[Fini]

More of Planet Parking Lot :>

 

[Aramar]

Biopark Australia has a new enclosure for penguins.

 

[wda1250]

Alright then, ill try my best to highlight the building process:

Workshop additions:

• dome roof (removed from this habitat) - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2526212130
• habitat climbing frame - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2596803699
• all the birds came from authors like Drac, among others. Just type the bird into the workshop and hope it is part of one of the workshop packs

Building Shell:

View attachment 343826

What i did was place the dome roof first at a suitable height. I then built 5 metre tall walls (i used the default color plaster walls) in the shape the building is, remember you need a large building to fit in multiple habitats , paths and ideally a small staff area aswell. In my case i also added glass roofs for the habitats aswell. Finally large primitive flat rectangles colored a dull white are used for roofing. Basic but very effective as i want a realistic roof that can be merged with all the angles seamlessly (you cant do that with ingame roofs). You can also leave the roof off for now if you dont want to work in an indoor space
The staff area is largely comestic of course with only a tiny portion being the actual staff area to the right of the picture, this is the jaguar keeper building which holds paths to the coati/raccoon and jaguar habitats along with a staff room and keeper hut. The comestic staff decorations are animal doors and metal staff doors from the doors/windows menu and of course the larger modern windows the windows

Entrance:

View attachment 343827

Simple enough entrance to do here. One way glass that has a blue/green color with metal beams for the windows. Normal glass panels for the door with more metal beams, one of the brackets for the door handle and primitive rectangles for the sign that hides an australia custom sign for the text. Inside the entrance holds a tropical plant room made with tropical rock cladding, add mulch and then flat crowberry bush. Decorate with tropical plants. The vines that connect the building from the jaguar habiat are the large south american vines with 3 of them bunched together to make them look larger. The rockwork to the left is aquatic faux rock.

Lets step inside:

View attachment 343828

This is where it gets hard so lets bulletpoint the steps here:

• First make your general path, it is 5 metres wide. The actual path is then topped with plaster floor (just above the path and colored to the gray path) to hide the rough path shape to make it look much better
• Tropical rock cladding and faux tree trunks make the border decorations, again color the faux tree to a nice tropical brown color. Tropical plant decorations should be used throughout
• Roof is made of bamboo floor, the lights are from some gift shop pack from the workshop which i cant remember which
• Indoor lighting is done by the new world spotlights on a dull white, lower these under the floor and position right to get the best light. You will need many of these for the correct lighting i got - see picture where each spotlight provides a different area

View attachment 343829

• The static aviaries are covered by either a mesh panel from the path menu or a habitat glass barrier. You can raise the terrain a tiny bit and flatten it for a realistic aviairy surface. Decorate sparsely with tropical plants and any aviary items you can find on the workshop if wished. Bird knowledge is good for the amount of birds in an aviary if doing this
• This is sandbox so of course disable animals needs, shelter, animal dying. Why? well that coati/raccoon habitat is barely 100m2 for a realistic size rather than the insane outdoor spaces required like the orginal clouded leopard needed in here

View attachment 343830

• Faux tree branches rotated into each form a nice textured wall, custom media is the rainforest background and that bamboo climbing frame serves our animals enrichment. A decently planted grassy floor to mimic a rainforest keeps the animals happy enough although we cant provide shelter for them, well it is indoors anyways. Of course we got a glass barrier, metal beams and tropical rocks for the barrier decoration. Faux tree trunks on both sides create a nice environment.
• To prevent guests from walking through the faux trees and rocks, place those green and black guest barriers from the security menu inside the rocks. Ensure you got a wide enough path so guests dont get trapped of course

View attachment 343831

• We got 2 turtle exhibits and 2 snake exhibits up next. Easy enough to deocate with tropical rocks and faux trees again. Hide the middle barrier to make it look like one big exhibit. Custom media of course makes animal signs much better
• The wooden barrier in the back is made from wooden round roles and bamboo rope holding stuff - whatever its called xD
• We turn a corner and the floor changes to an elevated floor as the monkey habitats are coming up - lower the terrain and make an elevated path with no barriers/fences. Connect to the ground path and then change the floor to horizontal wood

View attachment 343832

• Use that wooden post as a basic but effective barrier for the rest of the tropical house. Plaster walls to the right hides a staff room and keeper hut. First up is another static aviary, this time holding a small toucan (aracari). Following is 2 frog exhibits, again faux tree trunks made the decorations nice and easy

View attachment 343833

• First monkey habitat features many of the same features to keep the tropical house consistant. Custom media screens, faux tree branch walls, glass barrier with metal beams, tropical plants with a palm tree in here and the trusty bamboo climbing frame
• The last area before the main aviary features a larger second monkey habitat, 2 more static avairies and a decent sized toucan avairy all using custom media walls, tree trunks and tropical plants.

View attachment 343837

Walkthrough Rainforest Aviary:

View attachment 343838

This is the main highlight of the tropical house, we may not have free flying birds in here but it is still a wow attraction in the tropical house.

• White plaster walls form the circle around the dome roof. Lower the ground quite a bit and fill with tropical plants and trees
• the path is an elevated path with australia logs for supports, wooden round poles and bamboo rope holdings again. Planet zoo rope is used for the rope barrier
• have ambient speakers with the birds in here for the best environment, i used the south america speakers throughout the rest of the tropical house. Lower these into the ground so you dont see them, just have them right under the path
• The path turns a corner and shortly exits the aviary back to outside

Anything specific you need any details on how to do, let me know

Thank you so much for the breakdown!! much appreciated

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

Today i worked a bit more on the backstage and made the rough shells for a storehouse and a freezer contrainer.
Not the most excited things as they are not suppoused to be seen from the guest paths, but i really want to have an actual larger backstage area for this zoo to be complete, so this has been a major step towards that.

And this green thing is suppoused to be the freezer container, connected to the larger store house but with seperate entry points aswell.

Still gotta add more details and maybe an interior, aswell as airvents

 

[DarthQuell]

Today i worked a bit more on the backstage and made the rough shells for a storehouse and a freezer contrainer.
Not the most excited things as they are not suppoused to be seen from the guest paths, but i really want to have an actual larger backstage area for this zoo to be complete, so this has been a major step towards that.
View attachment 344065
View attachment 344066
And this green thing is suppoused to be the freezer container, connected to the larger store house but with seperate entry points aswell.
View attachment 344067

Still gotta add more details and maybe an interior, aswell as airvents

That freezer is perfect for Blue Bell ice cream and (if not possible to make yourself) frozen Marie Callender's pecan pies just begging to be heated up and eaten

 

[Swjosdotschka]

My 1.000.000 attemp to build an ASCO habitat I am happy with. I am not. Definetly need to work on the shelter, way too blocky.

 

[KönigDerKaffeebohnen]

My 1.000.000 attemp to build an ASCO habitat I am happy with. I am not. Definetly need to work on the shelter, way too blocky.

Well i think it looks nice

 

[Captain Callum]

My 1.000.000 attemp to build an ASCO habitat I am happy with. I am not. Definetly need to work on the shelter, way too blocky.

Just needs some more foliage that's all, having background trees and bushes improves the appeal of a shelter building or habitat by a large margin. Try out with some grass like the buffalo grass in some areas to bring out the flat textures of the ground

 

[DarthQuell]

Hi, Swjos. Missed you around these parts. I love the habitat. It looks perfect, also, for a Japanese garden

 

[Swjosdotschka]

Well i think it looks nice

Thank you, buddy. I appreciate.

Just needs some more foliage that's all, having background trees and bushes improves the appeal of a shelter building or habitat by a large margin. Try out with some grass like the buffalo grass in some areas to bring out the flat textures of the ground

Yes, definately. I also want to cover the keeper gate / make it less visible. It's far from ready. And thanks for the foliage tipps!

Hi, Swjos. Missed you around these parts. I love the habitat. It looks perfect, also, for a Japanese garden

Yeah, really need to get back to playing PZ more and getting out of my cave and be trusting around people again. I crafted and wrote though, so that's also why. Thanks for the warm welcome back <3

 

[Hugo98]

@Swjosdotschka I also really like your ASCO habitat. Keep it up!

I created some very basic ingame signs for my zoo. Of course in Portuguese and English to keep it realistic. I plan to add a sign for every species in my zoo, now with the base it's not that much of work.