The Blockbench rig

The Punchy! Moves rig is the third-person player as a Blockbench model, with its whole body and its face. With the plugin loaded, the head shows the face Punchy! Moves draws while you scrub and play, and a panel keys looks, eye shapes and face channels for you. This page is for anyone who already animates in Blockbench, or wants to.

You will download the rig and the plugin, set them up, key a clip with a face and an easing curve, and export it into a resource pack. The finished clips you look at in Look at a finished pack first come from the example pack provided by Crafto, Fluid & Foolish.

Before you start

• Blockbench 5.2.2. The rig and the plugin were checked in this version. The rig files are saved in Blockbench’s 5.0 project format.
• The rig files from the next section, kept somewhere that stays put. Blockbench loads the plugin from where it is every time it starts.
• Your skin, if you want to see it on the rig in place of the skin it comes with: a 64 by 64 PNG in the standard Minecraft skin layout. Slim arms need the slim rig.
• A resource pack folder to export into, with assets/punchy_moves/animations/ inside it. A new pack is made in Punchy! Studio for Moves packs or by hand in Create an animation.

Download the rig and the plugin

The models are Bedrock entity models saved as Blockbench 5.0 project files, the same kind of model that the first-person rig of Punchy! is. Punchy! Studio makes the same files for any pack, with bones for that pack’s own looks and eye shapes (see Make the rig for your own pack).

Set up Blockbench

The Moves Face panel shows in the Animate and Edit tabs, and only on a Punchy! Moves rig. Another model in Blockbench has no panel and no Easing (Punchy Moves) menu.

The rig

The rig is built the way Punchy! Moves poses the player, at the game’s own pivots, so a key on a bone moves the same part in game.

Positions are in pixels, rotations in degrees and scale is a factor. Key the bones as on any Blockbench model. The skin’s second layer (hat, jacket, sleeves, pants) follows its part, so it has no bones of its own.

• Hand guides. A small guide in each hand, a brown grip and a gray blade, shows how a held item sits in the hand. It is not your item.
• The face board. Beside the head, in the controls folder, a board holds one knob for each face channel. A knob’s position is the channel’s value, so a knob rises as you key it up. You rarely move the knobs by hand, because the Moves Face panel keys them for you.
• The looks folder. One bone for every built-in look, named face_look_ and the look’s name, such as face_look_happy.
• The eye_shapes folder. One bone for each side of each drawn eye shape: face_shape_arc_right and face_shape_arc_left, and the same for line, cup, press, cross, spiral and heart.
• The skin texture. The controls are colored in a corner of the skin that no part uses (x 56 to 63, y 32 to 43). The face marker block of a marked skin (x 56 to 63, y 16 to 31) stays as the skin has it.

The face bones are ordinary bones with position keys, so they export with the clip and Punchy! Moves reads them. Faces in packs and clips lists every face bone and how a clip’s face adds up.

Animate a clip with a face

You will make a short bow called bow_greeting. The full walk to the game, with the emote that plays it and the keys of the finished bow, is in Create an animation.

Look at a finished pack first

To see how a real clip is built, import animations from the example pack provided by Crafto and play two of them. That pack keeps its clips in several animation files under assets/punchy_moves/animations/, so import the file that holds the clip you want to look at.

The rig plays a whole pack’s clips, held items included.

Key the bow

The Moves Face panel

The panel keys at the playhead, into the selected animation. It has four parts.

Look

Pick one of the built-in looks and how much of it (0 to 1, 1 is the whole look), then press Key. A look stays on until you key it back down. Key its weight at 0 where the look should end, or key a second look to cross fade. A look also shows before its first key, because a channel holds its first key’s value from the start of the clip: key the look at 0 first, then key it up where it should begin. To change a look’s weight later, select its bone under looks in the outliner and edit its Position Y.

The list holds the 40 built-in 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 and shut. A rig that Punchy! Studio made for a pack lists the pack’s own looks as well.

Eye shapes

Pick a shape for the avatar’s Right eye, the Left eye or both, then press Key. The shapes are line, arc, cup, press, cross, spiral and heart, plus the pack’s own on a rig made by Studio. Leave one side empty to key only the other.

An eye takes a shape while the shape’s bone is above 0.5, and a shape bone keyed at 1 stays on. It also holds that value before its first key, so key the bone at 0 earlier in the clip, where the eye should still be open. To bring the eye back, move the playhead to where it should open, select the shape’s bone under eye_shapes and key its Position Y at 0.

Video coming soon

Channels at the playhead

A slider and a Key button for each face channel. Move the slider, move the playhead, press Key. Each channel is a bone whose position Y is the value, and the pupils use X as well. Several channels move the same part of the face as a key of the same name in a look file; Faces in packs and clips lists those keys.

Skin and eye sparkle

• Use a skin puts a 64 by 64 PNG on the rig and keeps the controls’ colors. A skin of another size is refused with a message.
• Eye sparkle shows the face with each sparkle a player can pick: Off, Line, Dot or Skin’s own, the glint a skin paints on its eye, which then moves with the pupil. Each player picks the sparkle with Eye sparkle in the Face tab of Punchy’s new menu (see The face editor), so the panel only previews it and nothing is keyed. A glint a skin paints on its eye hides while the eye is closed.

Video coming soon

Which eyes the face fits

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 PNG carries a face marker, which its owner writes with Export skin in the game’s face editor, is read from those marks. The panel says what it found at the top. When it says Moves finds no eyes, the rig shows no face, as the game would. See The face marker to mark them.

Shape the motion with easing

An easing gives the motion into a key a curve instead of an even pace. It works on any key that has another key before it, a bone’s or a face channel’s.

The menu offers None and ten curve families of easings.net, each as In, Out or In and out: Sine, Quad, Cubic, Quart, Quint, Expo, Circ, Back, Elastic and Bounce.

• In curves start slowly, Out curves arrive slowly, In and out curves do both.
• Back and Elastic overshoot the key and come back. Bounce bounces into it.
• The easing shapes the segment that ends on the key you set it on, so an easing on the first key of a channel changes nothing.
• Do not set an easing on the only key of a channel: unless the key is Smooth, Blockbench then writes that channel without times and Punchy! Moves ignores it. Leave a lone key without an easing.
• The current choice is marked in the menu. With several keys selected, your choice goes to all of them.
• The rig plays the curve as Punchy! Moves does, the project keeps it, and Export Animations writes it.
• Importing a clip that has easings keeps them, so you can edit it and export again.
• Interpolation is separate: set a key to Smooth for a smooth curve through your keys, or Linear for an even pace. A key can have both.

Export to your pack

Punchy! Moves reads every .json file in that folder, subfolders too. The export carries the easing of every key.

An export to copy

This is the rig’s example_wave, trimmed, with an easing added to the head’s first tilt. A key that has Smooth interpolation or an easing is written as an object, and most other keys as three numbers. Your numbers will differ a little.

{
  "format_version": "1.8.0",
  "animations": {
    "example_wave": {
      "loop": true,
      "animation_length": 2,
      "bones": {
        "head": {
          "rotation": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.5": { "post": [0, 0, 8], "easing": "easeOutBack" },
            "1.5": [0, 0, -8],
            "2.0": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        },
        "face_mix": { "position": [0, 1, 0] },
        "face_look_happy": {
          "position": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.3": [0, 1, 0],
            "1.7": [0, 1, 0],
            "2.0": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        },
        "face_lids": {
          "position": {
            "0.9": [0, 0, 0],
            "1.0": [0, 1, 0],
            "1.1": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        },
        "face_pupils": {
          "position": {
            "0.0": [0, 0, 0],
            "0.6": [1, 0, 0],
            "1.4": [-1, 0, 0],
            "2.0": [0, 0, 0]
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The easing member is the easings.net name, such as easeOutBack. A look keyed from 0 to 1 and back, a blink on the lids and a glance with the pupils are three ways to key the face.

Then play it

A pack needs a compat file that says when the clip plays, for example on the emote wheel. Create an animation puts bow_greeting on the wheel step by step, and Compat files lists everything a compat file can do. To keep working on the pack in Punchy! Studio, copy it in from the game and watch the clip on your own player in the Game view.

Make the rig for your own pack

Punchy! Studio writes the same rig for any pack, with bones for the pack’s own looks and eye shapes, and in your skin when it can read it. Open your pack in Studio’s third-person Animation workspace and choose File > Export Blockbench Rig.

It writes punchy-studio/blockbench/<pack>/ in your game folder:

• <pack>_rig.bbmodel and <pack>_rig_slim.bbmodel: the classic and slim rigs. The one that matches your player’s arms wears your skin when Studio can read it.
• punchy_moves_rig.js: the plugin, the same one as on this page.

Set it up as in Set up Blockbench. The Look and Eye shapes lists of the Moves Face panel then include your pack’s own. Punchy! Studio for Moves packs has the rest.

How Blockbench and the game differ

Punchy! Moves plays the export as Blockbench shows it, with these small differences:

• Moves bends the waist its own way, so a strong waist bend moves the arms a little differently in game.
• The hand guides only show the hand, not your item.

Blockbench’s Bedrock export also mirrors some axes, such as a position’s X and a rotation’s X and Y, and Moves reads that export. So key on the rig and export with Export Animations, and never copy numbers by hand between the project and a file.

Things that go wrong

• The Moves Face panel is missing. The plugin is not loaded, or the open model is not a Punchy! Moves rig. Check File > Plugins, then open punchy_moves_player.bbmodel and switch to the Animate tab. After a restart Blockbench loads the plugin from the file you picked, so a moved file means no plugin.
• A message says to select an animation first. The panel keys into the selected animation. Pick one in the Animations panel.
• A message says the rig has no bone for a look or a shape. The downloaded rig has the built-in looks and the seven drawn eye shapes only. The Eye shapes list can also offer blank, which has no bone on it. Pick one of the rig’s own, or make the rig for your pack in Studio.
• A skin is refused. A skin is 64 by 64 pixels. Resize it first.
• The panel finds no eyes on the skin. The rig then shows no face, as the game would. Mark the eyes in the game and export the skin, as in The face marker.
• An eye keeps its shape, or a look never ends. A key holds until you key it back. Key the shape’s or the look’s bone at 0 where it should end.
• A look, shape or channel shows before its first key. A channel holds its first key’s value from the start of the clip, not only after it. Key it at 0 first, then key it up where it should begin.
• The pupils glance the wrong way. Blockbench’s export flips the X of a position key, and the panel’s sliders do that for you. Key the pupils from Pupils, not by typing X in the timeline.
• The clip does not loop in the game. Only Loop loops. Set Loop Mode to Loop in the animation’s properties.
• The compat file cannot find the clip. Clip names are case-sensitive. Blockbench’s default name for a new animation starts with animation. and the model’s name, so rename it to the plain name before you export.
• An animation file adds no clips. A file that is not valid JSON, or whose root is not an object, adds nothing, and the game logs nothing. If one clip in a valid file cannot be read, the clips before it stay and the rest of that file is skipped. Re-export from Blockbench instead of editing the file by hand.
• No Easing menu. Select a key first, then right-click it, on a Punchy! Moves rig with the plugin loaded.
• An easing does nothing. It does nothing on the first key of a channel, and on a channel’s only key it can make the game ignore the channel. Put it on the key the motion arrives at.

Related pages

• Create an animation: the whole path from the rig to a clip on the emote wheel.
• Animation files: everything a clip file can hold.
• Faces in packs and clips: looks, eye shapes and every face bone.
• The face marker: marking the eyes of a skin.
• Compat files: which clip plays when.
• Punchy! Studio for Moves packs and the Game view: the other way to make clips, and a way to check them on your own player.