If you want your custom gifs to show up in-game, you have to save them in This PC/Documents/Frontier Developments/Planet Zoo/UserMedia.
After you dropped them in that folder, you will be able to access them through your billboards, screen panels, education boards and others, under the "REPLACE IMAGE" button, through which you will access Custom Media, where your gifs/pictures are saved. Note that your gif needs to be saved as a WEBM format for it in order to work.

As for your music, you need to save your music to This PC/Documents/Frontier Developments/Planet Zoo/UserMusic. This folder is right below your UserMedia folder. After you've done that, you can access your music through various speakers in-game, where you will replace music the same way as you replaced images for your gifs. It is important that the music files you use need to be in MP3 format.

There are many places on the internet where you can find appropriate gifs and music for your zoo. For the gifs, i would personally suggest using Giphy or Tenor . With their large library of various gifs, I am sure you will find something that you would like to use on one of your billboards! (there are no George Gently gifs tho, which is kind of a bummer ;-;)



The obvious choice for music is of course Youtube, but you can get your mp3 files elsewhere too, if you want. Too bad that you cannot directly download a mp3 file from Youtube, so you will have to resort to one of the third-party mp3 converters and hope that you don't choose the one that downloads something else on your computer besides the mp3 file...
I personally use Youtube to MP3 converter or YtMp3 for short, and it didn't fail me yet. But if you use any other converters that you can trust, no problem, download as much music as you like for your zoo through them!



Regarding the music, this is basically it, no complications, no nothing. But regarding your gifs, there may occur a major problem, which we will be discussing next...

This problem occurs with gifs as well as images. Planet Zoo will make your custom media BLINDINGLY BRIGHT. As you may have seen with the screenshot above, George appears to be smoking next to the Sun.
Another problem with gifs in Planet Zoo is the requirement for them to in a Webm format, a very random format which, at first hand, appears hard to convert into.
But both of these inconveniences can be solved, which I will explain further down in the guide...

Before you read further, I must note, that I will be using Adobe Photoshop for editing purely because of personal preference. But through Adobe programs you CANNOT convert to Webm (unless you use an extension that basically doesn't work), so further down the guide we will switch to a gif editing site, where you can convert AND edit your gif properly. So if you don't have Photoshop or you don't plan on using it, you can skip this part and go to "How to edit and convert with Ezgif" section.

So, to properly edit your gif, you need to open it in Photoshop (note that it needs to be in .gif file of course). Because we don't have the time to edit every single frame one by one, you will need to make an Adjustment layer in your Layer panel above, where you will choose Brightness/Contrast for your special layer. Then click "OK" to confirm the creation of the layer.



After you've done this, drag your adjustment layer on the very top of every layer in your gif. You need to do this, so the effects will apply to every single frame.



As you have seen with the screenshot above, you now have Brightness and Contrast sliders at your disposal. Use them, and make your gif much darker than the original and greatly increase the contrast. You may think that your gif is now too dark or has too much contrast, but it does not, as it will look much better in-game.


The last thing you do, is exporting your gif through Save for Web (Legacy). But dont export it to your UserMedia file, because it is not in a Webm file yet, or more precisely, you cannot export it through a Webm format through Photoshop. So for now, just select the Animated Gif option.

Ezgif. com is a online gif maker and editor. I have used it many times, and I trust it quite a bit, as my computer still didn't get absolutely obliterated by a virus from it :). It's also nice how it doesn't require an account for you to use it.

So lets proceed with editing. You will drop your gif into their "Effects" panel and proceed by significantly decreasing Brightness and increasing Contrast. As opposed to Photoshop, when you change the sliders, you cannot see how your gif will look. You will first need to apply your changes, wait for it to load, and if you won't be satisfied with the results, you will need to change the sliders yet again. But still, if you don't have anyother editing programs, Ezgif is better than nothing. See the screenshots above in the "How to edit your GIF in Photoshop" to see, how your final gif should look after editing.


Ezgif offers you an option to convert to the so much desired Webm format. Because I cannot find a way to access the "Convert to Webm" file through the "Effects" panel (I may be stupid), I suggest you save your edited gif, and then drop it again into the "Gif to Webm" file (you can also quickly find it by typing: Ezgif webm converter into Google).

After this, simply click "Convert". Then you can finally save your Webm file from Ezgif straight into your UserMedia folder, and your gif will now work inside your game!


As you can now see, the gif on the right, which we edited just now, looks much better than the unedited gif shining on the left.

It is also important to know, that the brighter your original image is, it will require more brightness and contrast adjustments. The opposite could be said by already really dark gifs, which won't be needing as much changes.

Now you know how to get your gifs and music into the game. You can now make your zoos more personal and better looking with custom media that you yourself like and enjoy.
Thank you everyone for reading my guide and I hope you have a great day!


If you are wondering how to upload normal images to Planet Zoo, I have a guide for that too
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3231049396