Nerdy's Better Animations

Nerdy's better animations is a plugin that aims to improve upon the java animation system of entities and items by adding new procedure blocks that directly trigger animations and other miscellaneous additions.

Triggerable entity animations

While this plugin is loaded, entity animations without a playback condition will never play instead of always playing by default. These animations will now only play when triggered through the use of this procedure block.

What does animation index mean?
Animation index is the order in which the animation has been added to the entity's animations list. Here is an example of an entity with animations with their index visible.

Entity texture swapping

Through the use of this procedure block, one can easily swap a custom entity's texture without the addition of new model layers and display conditions. It simply requires providing the entity texture's name without any directory paths or file extensions.

Triggerable item animations

This procedure block works the same way as its entity variant, but for custom items. Similarly to entities, items will also have animations without playback conditions only play when triggered with this procedure block.

Item java model display settings

Modifications have been made to the item element to allow for the selection of a display settings json model when a java model is selected. With this you can control how the item is displayed in all perspectives. This can be done by making a copy of your item java model, and converting it to java block/item which supports display settings in blockbench. After exporting it in json format, you can select it and its display properties will be applied to your java model.

An additional option is also provided to specify in which perspectives the java model's animations will play.

Item player arm rendering

This plugin also allows the rendering and animating of player arms on animated items. The arms will only render if put under specific bone names in the item java model. You can find and download this example java model that showcases the use of this system and this example java model that contains arm bones you can copy and paste directly into your model.

Java plugins must be enabled for the plugin to work fully

Changelog

v1.5.6
-Minor item renderer code optimizations

v1.5.5
-Fix choppy item animations in worlds with very long playtime

v1.5.4
-Fix item animations progressing in frozen time (pause menu or tick freeze)

v1.5.3
-Fixed items causing a build error when more than 1 animation was used

v1.5.2
-Updated some 26.1.2 code templates to apply changes/bugfixes from the recent mcreator patch

v1.5.1
-Updated the item code templates to apply changes/bugfixes from the recent mcreator patch

v1.5
-Reimplemented the item animation procedure block with better reliability

v1.4.1
-Updated living entity code templates to apply changes/bugfixes from the recent mcreator patch

v1.4
-Overhauled arm rendering to allow for placing the arm folders anywhere inside the model
(use new item arms example model for updated pivots)

v1.3
-Added back item arm rendering
-Fixed perspective-specific item animations not working in 26.1.2

v1.2
-Ported to MCreator 2026.2 and Minecraft 26.1.2
-Discontinued first person arm rendering and animation procedure block for items due to bad implementation
(possibly to return in the future)

v1.1
-Ported to MCreator 2026.1

v1.0.3
-Fixed json model display settings applying to unrelated items

v1.0.2
-Fixed items using java models crashing the game if they had animations but didnt use arm rendering

v1.0.1
-Fixed living entity walk animations causing build errors

v1.0
-Plugin release