Punchy! Moves rig for Blockbench

The third-person player of Punchy! Moves as a Blockbench model, with its whole body and its face, so you can make Punchy! Moves animations in Blockbench.

What is in this folder

  punchy_moves_player.bbmodel        the player with classic arms
  punchy_moves_player_slim.bbmodel   the player with slim arms
  punchy_moves_rig.js                the Blockbench plugin that shows and keys the face

Setting up

1. In Blockbench, choose File > Plugins, click Load Plugin from File (the file icon beside the search box) and pick punchy_moves_rig.js. Blockbench loads it again every time it starts, so keep the file where it is.
2. Open punchy_moves_player.bbmodel, or the slim one if your skin has slim arms.
3. To see your own skin on the rig, click Use a skin in the Moves Face panel and pick your skin (a 64 by 64 PNG).

The rig

- The bones are the ones Punchy! Moves reads, at the game's own pivots: root, waist, head, body, right_arm, left_arm, right_leg, left_leg, and right_item and left_item in the hands. Put keys on these bones the way you would on any Blockbench model.
- The small guides in the hands (a brown grip and a gray blade) show how a held item sits in the hand. They are not your item, and they do not end up in the animation.
- Beside the head is the face board, in the controls folder. Each knob is one face channel, and the knob's position is the channel's value, so a knob rises as you key it up. The looks and eye_shapes folders hold a bone for every look and eye shape.
- The example_wave animation shows how a wave, a head tilt, a happy look, a blink and a glance to the side are keyed.

Animating

- Work in the Animate tab. With the plugin loaded, the head shows the face Punchy! Moves draws for the keys at the playhead, as you scrub or play.
- The face fits the eyes on the skin, as Punchy! Moves reads them: two eyes, one eye in the middle, eyes that touch, eyes of two colors or at two heights, one eye with the other under hair, or dark eyes without a white. A skin whose author marked its eyes in Punchy! Moves' face editor is read from those marks. The Moves Face panel says what it found.
- Each player picks the eye sparkle in Punchy! Moves' Face settings, so it is not keyed. Eye sparkle in the Moves Face panel shows the face with each one: off, a line, a dot, or the skin's own glint, which then moves with the pupil. A glint a skin paints on its eye hides while the eye is closed.
- The Moves Face panel keys a look, the eye shapes or any face channel at the playhead, so you rarely need to move the knobs by hand.
- To ease a move, right-click its key and choose Easing (Punchy Moves): None, or one of the curves of easings.net (Sine, Quad, Cubic, Quart, Quint, Expo, Circ, Back, Elastic and Bounce, each In, Out or In and out). It shapes the motion into that key, the rig plays it as Punchy! Moves does, the project keeps it, and the export writes it.
- When you are done, choose Animation > Export Animations and save into your resource pack's assets/punchy_moves/animations folder.

Good to know

- Punchy! Moves plays the export as Blockbench shows it, with two small differences: Moves bends the waist its own way, so a strong waist bend moves the arms a little differently in game, and the hand guides only show the hand, not your item.
- Punchy! Studio makes these files for any pack, with File > Export Blockbench Rig in the third-person Animation workspace. Those rigs also have bones for the pack's own looks and eye shapes, and wear your skin when Studio can read it.