Custom Mobs with skins?

I was looking over at Dungeon Realms, and read some pages on Bukkit. I know you cannot create "truly" custom mobs with Bukkit without Client Mods, but how did DR do it? They custom skins?() It seems that they used a normal skeleton and somehow put a skin onto it. Are there hidden files in Minecraft or something?

 

Resource packs...

 

I didn't watch the video, butit is possible to create a skeleton skin and have a player equip it, spawn in an NPC and set the name of the character to that of the real MC account with the skeleton skin. That might be the closest you can get skin and texture wise through server side. Besides resource packs.

 

This is what they look like without a resource pack.

 

chimechongas
Easy as pie :

Code:java

                    ItemStack skull = new ItemStack(Material.SKULL_ITEM, 1, (short) SkullType.PLAYER.ordinal());
SkullMeta meta = (SkullMeta) skull.getItemMeta();
meta.setOwner("thisistheplayernamethattheheadhastobe/or skull");
skull.setItemMeta(meta);
                    final Skeleton z = p.getWorld().spawn(p.getLocation(), Skeleton.class);
            z.setSkeletonType(SkeletonType.WITHER);
                    z.getEquipment().setHelmet(skull);
                    z.setCustomName(ChatColor.LIGHT_PURPLE+""+ChatColor.BOLD+"Clumsy Poison Bandit");
                    z.setCustomNameVisible(true);

It uses player skulls -.- and setSkeletonType is the skeleton type and i set it to wither
I also set the name (I didnt set the armor because that is waste of my time) "thisistheplayernamethattheheadhastobe/or skull" Is the players name! so if you set it to a players name it will get their head

 

That is just a renamed wither skeleton with armor and a player head.

 

Its just a mob with a player head. was a builder at the server and helped with an alt for the head skin.