TicxoMost mobs have animations that breathe life into them. With the help of Model Engine, you can use custom idle, walk, attack, and any other animations you wish.
Fundamentals
State
Let's start with the basics. With Model Engine, models move according to the states they have. Each model can have multiple states at once. For example, a model can be walking and attacking at the same time. You are not required to create a unique animation for such situations. Model Engine will automatically combine the animations you assigned to both states, and create a new animation.
Loop and Override are two very basic yet important options you can select for your animation. It controls how a state should be interpreted and executed.
Loop Mode
Loop Mode determines whether an animation should run only once, indefinitely, or hold on last frame until it is removed.
When a state is set to only play once, the state would be automatically removed from the model after playing.
If it is set to loop, the state will loop back to the first frame, and only stop playing when the state is removed manually.
Finally, as the name would suggest, hold on last frame will stay on the last animation frame instead of looping back.
Override
Override flag tells Model Engine that this animation should cancel all animations that have lower priority than it. This
option is mainly used when the model has multiple states, but you don't want other animations interrupting it. For
instance, a special attack animation shouldn't combine with idle or walk.
You can toggle these options in BlockBench by right-clicking on one of the animations and checking the checkboxes.
You can check both options at the same time. Model Engine will have no problem reading that.
Default states
Default states are states automatically handled and played by Model Engine.
Here is a list of default states and their behaviors.:
| State | Condition | Loop Mode | Override |
|---|---|---|---|
| idle | Not moving | Loop | No |
| walk | Moving | Loop | No |
| jump_start | Start jumping | Once | Yes |
| jump | After jumping and while in mid air | Loop | Yes |
| jump_end | After jumping and when lands on the ground. | Once | Yes |
| spawn | On model first spawn. | Once | Yes |
| death | On model death. This state will forcibly remove all existing animations from the model. |
Hold on last tick | Yes |
Animating
Animating in BlockBench is pretty straightforward. However, there are a few key points:
- Usable Bones
- You can animate all bones except
hitbox.hitboxbone will be ignored by Model Engine as it is removed as soon as it is loaded.
- You can animate all bones except
- FPS
- Since Minecraft updates 20 times per second (0.05s per tick), all animations will run at 20 fps internally. However, Model Engine can interpret higher FPS animations, and by default the animation would be played back at max FPS in game.
- You can configure the snap option in BlockBench by changing the Animation Snap option to 20, located under File/Settings/Snapping. The timeline slider would then move at 0.05 intervals.
- Keyframe Types
- Both linear and smooth keyframe can be used. Bezier keyframe is under development
Let's add some animations to the model we made before.
idle [Loop]
walk [Loop]
feed [Override]
These are 3 very basic animations done simply by moving and rotating a few parts. However, more complicated animations are also done by such methods, only using more frames to create more fluid movements.
Importing Animations
Animations are automatically imported through the .bbmodel file you provided. No extra steps needed.