Issue: in an attempt to not use optifine and trying to use the Human Player Villagers Mod

I've been not using the optifine mod with the create mod, as the two are incompatible, but the Human Player Villagers mod has it as a requirement for the custom entity models feature. Of course, I know there is ways around this, but when I install EMF (entity model features) and the mod through curseforge, the villagers dont seem to be affected. I've attempted putting the .zip file directly into the resourcepacks file for minecraft, but no luck.