Importing custom character models

[asteriddle]

Hi! I hadn't touched this game in forever but I ended up getting a thought that led me down the modding rabbit hole. I'm familiar with modding various other games but WWE2K is new to me, modding wise.
Unfortunately outside of things like removing and swapping parts, I couldn't find much about this on the wiki and most video tutorials utilize a paid tool that I'm not even sure is still available. I wasn't able to finds any docs for reShape, but maybe I missed them.

What I want to do is swap the .OBJ data of characters with those of models I have created. I've gotten to uncompressing and viewing .YOBJ files in reShape - however where I get stuck is when exporting the OBJ itself, which when opened in Blender has no bone or vertex weight data, which has me confused. This also includes the animation files - just a mesh with no weights/bones and no animation. There's also no indication of materials present on the exported mesh.
I've seen full-model replacements while browsing so I figure it must be possible.

I'm also not entirely sure how to put new textures on a potential custom model but that'll be a problem for future me.

 

Alternative question: Is it any easier in 2k22 and would 'upgrading' be worth it?