Getting started

Punchy! Moves animates your whole character in third person. It gives you a shoulder camera, an emote wheel and a face that blinks, glances and reacts, and it plays the body animations that a resource pack brings. This page is for anyone who wants it running: how to install it, what to try in the first minutes, and how to add or make a pack. You do not need to know anything about animation files yet.

Before you start

You need three things on your own computer:

• Minecraft Java Edition, in a version and with a loader that Punchy! Moves comes for (the table below).
• The Punchy! Moves .jar for that Minecraft version and loader. On Fabric, Fabric API for the same version goes with it.
• An animation pack, to see animations. Moves ships without them, and Add an animation pack shows how to add one.

Punchy! Moves is a client mod. Install it on your own game only. A server does not need it, and nothing is sent to a server: the poses and faces are worked out on your screen. You do not need Punchy! or Punchy! Studio to run it. If you have Punchy!, the two run side by side: Punchy! animates your hands in first person, and Punchy! Moves animates the body you see in third person.

Install Punchy! Moves

You can read the quick guide again at any time: press F7 to open Moves’ settings and press Replay tutorial, the button in the left column.

What Punchy! Moves adds

• A shoulder camera. Your own third-person view, framed over the shoulder, with sliders for where the camera sits. Packs can change the framing for gliding, fences, ladders, riding, maps, close blocks and aiming.
• Body animations from packs. Moves ships no clips of its own. A resource pack brings the clips and names which one plays for each moment, and Moves plays and blends them. Walking in four directions, sprinting, crouching, crawling, jumping, falling and landing, climbing, swimming, flying with an elytra, riding, and the items in your hands are all moments a pack can animate.
• An emote wheel. The emotes a pack lists, each playable from the wheel or from its own key.
• Faces. A living face drawn from each player’s own skin, with 119 reactions to what the player does. It needs no pack.
• Better Combat. With Better Combat installed, a pack can give its weapon attacks their own clips with Better Combat’s timing.

Without a pack, the camera, the faces and the settings all work, but no body clips play and the emote wheel is empty. The clips on this wiki use the example pack provided by Crafto, Fluid & Foolish.

Your first minutes in game

Switch on the shoulder camera

Press the camera key to switch the shoulder camera on, and again to switch it off.

Video coming soon

Reset, at the bottom of the left column, puts the camera sliders, the Features switches and the Better Combat pack attacks and Spatial GUI panel choices back to their defaults and turns Custom Camera on. The Features page has a switch for each situation where the camera adjusts by itself: Fence camera, Ladder camera, Nearby-block camera, Elytra camera, Map third-person camera, Bow and crossbow camera and Spear and trident camera. A last switch, Face the ladder, keeps your body attached to the ladder. All eight are on by default. Under them, each click on Better Combat pack attacks steps through Automatic, On and Off, and Automatic shows whether it is on right now, as Automatic (ON) or Automatic (OFF). The last row, Spatial GUI panel, matters only with the Spatial GUI mod: Full, Partial or Off. Camera and features explains each one.

Play an emote

Emotes come from the active pack, so this needs a pack that lists some. Make a pack with one emote below builds a tiny one in a few minutes.

When the pack gives an emote a key, you can also play it with that key alone. The camera keys and each emote’s own key are listed under Punchy Moves in Minecraft’s key binds, and Keys and emotes covers them all. G is not in that list.

Watch your face

Faces need no pack and no setup. They work on every player you see, on any server, because each one is drawn from the skin on your own screen. First person draws no face, so look at your character in third person.

Video coming soon

If your skin shows no face or the wrong one, mark the eyes by hand in the face editor. Faces explains how the face finds the eyes and every setting, and Face reactions lists all 119 reactions. Faces work without Punchy’s new menu, but the face settings and the face editor sit in the Face tab of Punchy’s new menu, in its Punchy Moves group (F8 opens the menu), so you need that menu to open them. It comes with Punchy!, from Modrinth or CurseForge.

Add an animation pack

A Punchy! Moves pack is an ordinary resource pack with a few extra folders. You add it the same way as any other resource pack.

Things worth knowing:

• Moves reads the files of every pack that is switched on. When two packs have a file at the same path, the one higher in the pack list wins. Face reaction changes (faces/triggers.json) are the exception: every pack’s copy is read, and a higher pack’s change to a reaction replaces a lower pack’s for that reaction only.
• After you change a pack’s files, reload with F3+T (or change a pack) so Moves reads them again.
• Pressing G reads the packs’ Moves files again and plays the pack’s alignment clip, a full-body check for pack makers. The text above the hotbar says Punchy: playing align_ingame when the pack’s compat files set an alignment action, and Punchy: align_ingame was not found when they do not.

What a pack holds

Make a pack with one emote

This is the smallest pack that shows something in game: a waving clip and an emote that plays it. Make these folders and files inside your resourcepacks folder:

my_first_pack/
  pack.mcmeta
  assets/
    punchy_moves/
      animations/
        wave.json
      compat/
        emotes.json

The arm is keyed by its rotation in degrees on three axes (x, y, z), at times in seconds, and between keys the motion runs in a straight line. loop must be the JSON value true: the text "true" or the number 1 plays the clip once. Animation files explains every key, easing and smooth curves.

The keys at a glance

These are the defaults. Change V, B, F7, C and the emote keys under Punchy Moves in Minecraft’s key binds. G cannot be remapped.

With Punchy’s new menu installed, the face settings and the face editor are in that menu, as the Face tab of its Punchy Moves group. Punchy!‘s menu key, F8 by default, opens it.

What Moves saves on your computer

Moves keeps its settings in config/punchy_moves/ in the game folder. Close the game before editing a file by hand.

Things that go wrong

• The game does not start, or Moves does not show up. Check that the Punchy! Moves file in the mods folder is the one for your profile’s Minecraft version and loader (Before you start has the table). The Punchy Moves key group is missing when the mod did not load.
• V does nothing. The keys work while you are in a world with no menu open. Check that nothing else uses the key under Options, Controls, Key Binds.
• The custom camera went off when I pressed F5. Minecraft’s perspective key turns the custom camera off while the view passes through first person and the front view. It comes back by itself when the view is behind you again, if the Custom Camera switch is on.
• The emote wheel says “No emotes in the active pack”. No pack that is switched on lists emotes. Turn a pack on, or make the pack above. An emote whose clip name does not match the animation file exactly is dropped from the wheel.
• The emote does not play. You must be standing still on the ground. A request made while you move is dropped, and moving during an emote cancels it.
• The body moves like plain Minecraft. No pack is switched on, or the pack has no clip for that moment. A file whose JSON is broken is not read, and a whole compat file is lost when it has a layout error, such as a missing format_version or a key the layout does not allow. Reload, and check the game’s log for a warning that starts with Could not load animation compat and names the file.
• A clip does not play, and no warning appears. Animation files that fail are skipped without a log line. A clip name that no animation file defines, because it is spelled differently, plays nothing. A clip whose JSON throws stops its file, so the clips after it in the same file are lost too. Check the spelling and the JSON against Animation files.
• My skin has no face, or the eyes are in the wrong place. Open the face editor (in the Face tab of Punchy’s new menu) and mark the eyes by hand. See Face editor.

More fixes are in Troubleshooting.

Where to go next

The quickest way to make your own clips is Punchy! Studio, from Modrinth or CurseForge: it plays the clip on your own player, in the game, while you work.

• Tune the camera and the keys: Camera and features and Keys and emotes.
• Understand and shape faces: Faces, Faces in packs and clips, Face reactions, Face editor and Face marker.
• Make your own clips: the fastest way is to build the pack inside the game with Punchy! Studio and watch each change on your own player in the Game view. You can also animate in Blockbench on the Punchy! Moves rig, or write the files yourself: Create an animation, Animation files and Compat files.
• Follow a recipe: A walk cycle, An emote, An item sequence, Riding and Swimming.
• Questions: FAQ. If you also use the first-person mod, Getting started with Punchy! is its counterpart.