Keys and emotes

Punchy! Moves has a few keys: two for the camera, one for its settings, one for the emote wheel, and one more for each emote a pack adds. This page lists every key with its label and default, shows how the emote wheel works, and walks you through adding emotes to a pack, with keys and faces.

It is for players who want to change a key or play an emote, and for pack makers who want their clips on the wheel.

Before you start

• Punchy! Moves installed (Getting started has the steps). Moves ships no clips of its own, so emotes come from resource packs.
• To follow the pack example you need nothing else: the clips are in the example. The clips on this page that show a pack use the example pack provided by Crafto, Fluid & Foolish.
• For the Punchy! Studio steps, Punchy! Studio and a pack with a clip named wave (see Punchy! Moves in Punchy! Studio).

Every key

Moves puts its keys under the category Punchy Moves in Minecraft’s key binds. On Minecraft 1.21.1 and 1.20.1 the category shows as key.categories.punchy_moves, and each emote row as Punchy Emote: followed by the emote’s name.

The camera itself is explained on Camera and features.

Video coming soon

Fixed keys

Two more keys do something in Moves but are not in the key binds list, so you cannot move them.

How the keys behave

• Moves’ keys work in a world with no screen open, and only the press counts. Holding a key does nothing more.
• Moves checks its keys before the game does, in this order: Toggle Custom Camera, Open Camera Settings, Toggle Orbit Camera, Open Emote Wheel, then each emote key, then F and G. When two things share a key, the first one in that order gets the press and the other never fires.
• A key you set in Controls always wins over a default from a pack.

Change a key

You can also press F7 and open Shortcuts. The page lists the four Moves keys and one row per emote, each with its current key, and scrolls when there are more than ten rows. Its Open Minecraft key binds button opens Minecraft’s Key Binds. Replay tutorial, the button in the left column on every page, shows the quick guide again, including its page “Emotes at your fingertips”.

Play an emote

Or skip the wheel: press the emote’s own key, if the pack gave it one.

The wheel

• Four emotes sit around a centre button, one page at a time. Each tile shows the emote’s name and, in a small box, its key, or the game’s own text for an unbound key when it has none.
• The < and > buttons turn the pages, and they wrap round from the last page to the first. The counter under the wheel reads like “2 / 2” and shows only when there is more than one page.
• The X in the middle closes the wheel. So does the wheel key, or Esc.
• With no emotes at all, the wheel says “No emotes in the active pack”.
• The wheel lists the emotes of the active packs, in the path order of the compat files. When two packs have a compat file at the same path, only the higher pack’s file is read. An emote whose clip no pack defines is left out.

When an emote plays

• Only while you stand still and on the ground. If you press an emote key while moving, the request is dropped, not kept for later. Moving while an emote plays ends it.
• The emote plays its clip once and fades out.
• Emotes are not sent to other players. Only you see your own emotes, and only your own avatar gets an emote face.

Video coming soon

Add emotes to a pack

An emote is a clip plus one entry in a compat file. You write the clip in an animation file, list the emote in the emotes object of a compat file, and the wheel and the key binds pick it up.

The files

Make a folder my_emotes with this layout. It goes in your resourcepacks folder.

my_emotes/
  pack.mcmeta
  assets/punchy_moves/animations/my_emotes.json
  assets/punchy_moves/compat/my_emotes.json

pack.mcmeta, with the resource format of Minecraft 1.21.11. On another version, put that version’s number from the table on Resource packs in place of the 75s:

{
  "pack": {
    "description": "Three emotes for Punchy Moves",
    "pack_format": 75,
    "min_format": 75,
    "max_format": 75
  }
}

animations/my_emotes.json holds three short clips: an arm wave, a head turn from side to side, and a nod. See Animation files for every key.

{
  "format_version": "1.8.0",
  "animations": {
    "wave": {
      "animation_length": 1.2,
      "bones": {
        "right_arm": {
          "rotation": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.3": { "post": [0, 0, 140], "lerp_mode": "catmullrom", "easing": "easeOutBack" },
            "0.6": { "post": [0, 0, 110], "lerp_mode": "catmullrom" },
            "0.9": { "post": [0, 0, 140], "lerp_mode": "catmullrom" },
            "1.2": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        },
        "head": { "rotation": [0, 0, 8] }
      }
    },
    "look_around": {
      "animation_length": 2.0,
      "bones": {
        "head": {
          "rotation": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.5": [0, -35, 0],
            "1.0": [0, 35, 0],
            "1.5": [0, -15, 0],
            "2.0": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        }
      }
    },
    "nod": {
      "animation_length": 1.0,
      "bones": {
        "head": {
          "rotation": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.25": [18, 0, 0],
            "0.5": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.75": [18, 0, 0],
            "1.0": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

compat/my_emotes.json puts the clips on the wheel:

{
  "format_version": 2,
  "emotes": {
    "menu_key": "C",
    "entries": [
      { "id": "wave", "display_name": "Wave", "animation": "wave", "keybind": "H", "face": "happy" },
      { "id": "look_around", "display_name": "Look around", "animation": "look_around", "keybind": "J", "face": "curious" },
      { "id": "nod", "display_name": "Nod", "animation": "nod", "face": "cheery" }
    ]
  }
}

Wave is on H, Look around on J, and Nod has no key, so it is only on the wheel until a player binds one.

The example pack provided by Crafto does the same with its own clips: its compat file lists four emotes, on H, J, K and L, and an entry there looks like this.

{ "id": "hello", "display_name": "Hello", "animation": "hello_nleg", "keybind": "H" }

Try it

In Punchy! Studio

Studio writes the same compat file and tells you as you type whether the game reads it.

You can also select the Emotes object in the outliner and edit the same fields in the sheet. See Punchy! Moves in Punchy! Studio for the rest of the workspaces, and Emote recipe for a start-to-finish emote.

Emote fields

The emotes object sits at the root of a compat file in format 2. Files are read in path order and their emote lists add up across files and packs. When two packs have a file at the same path, only the higher pack’s copy is read.

Key names

Write a key without the key.keyboard. start, in any case: H and h are the same. The full name, such as key.keyboard.h, works too. These are the names the game knows.

How the game makes the keys

• Moves creates an emote’s key the first time it sees the emote’s id, then keeps it for the whole session. Change keybind later, after a reload for example, and a key that already exists does not move.
• The key’s name in the key binds is built from the display name, so give every emote its own display name.
• A reload (F3+T or a change of resource packs) reads the compat files again and lists the emotes again.

Emote faces

The face plays the emote’s face look for as long as the emote plays, on your own avatar. Leave face out and the face plays Happy.

The name must be written exactly as it is below: lower case, with underscores and no spaces. Anything else plays Happy, including a capital letter, a space, a typo and the name of a look your own pack draws.

Looks:

neutral, happy, joyful, excited, sparkly, love, proud, smug, relaxed, zen, wink, sly, sneaky, curious, focused, squint, determined, furious, menacing, strain, surprised, shocked, scared, nervous, worried, sad, crying, pain, wince, dizzy, knocked, sick, tired, sleepy, bored, cold, hot, blinded, wary, shut

Other names an emote can use:

cross, calm, flutter, narrow, wink_left, wink_right, startled, glum, uneasy, cheery, intent, aghast, hurting, drowsy, laugh, angry, glance_left, glance_right

• Own looks and moving faces. The face of an entry names one of the looks above. For a look your pack draws, or a face that changes during the emote, put the face in the clip instead. A clip can hold one look for its whole length with "face": "sleepy", or key the face channels in Punchy! Studio’s Animation workspace, or key a look into the clip with Key in Clip in the Face workspace. A face keyed in the clip shows over the emote’s look. See Faces in packs and clips.
• Stronger reactions. The emote look is one of the face’s reactions. A stronger one, such as the hurt look after a hit, shows over it while it lasts. See Face reactions.
• Turning it off. In Punchy’s new menu, the Face tab of the Punchy Moves group has an Emotes switch (on by default). Turn it off and emotes no longer set a look.

Things that go wrong

Things that drop a whole file

The game drops the whole compat file, and the pack’s emotes with it, when:

• format_version is missing, or is anything other than 2 or "2". Writing 2.0 or 3 drops it too.
• The root has a key the format does not take. The root takes $schema, format_version, defaults, item_groups, items, empty_hand, variables, cameras and emotes, and no others. A misspelled emote drops the file.
• The JSON is broken, such as a missing comma. Moves reads JSON more leniently than most tools (comments load), but keep the file plain JSON.

The game logs the reason, starting with Could not load animation compat, and shows nothing on screen. Studio’s Verdict tells you as you type.

Why my emote is not on the wheel or does not play

Related pages

• Camera and features for V, B, F7 and the Features switches.
• Compat files for every other thing a compat file can say.
• Animation files and Make an animation for the clips.
• Emote recipe for an emote made from nothing.
• Faces, Faces in packs and clips and Face reactions for looks.
• Punchy! Moves in Punchy! Studio and Game view for watching a clip on your player while you edit.
• Troubleshooting and the FAQ.