Playing animations

Animations in Mine Mine no Mi are code, not assets: no Blockbench, no JSON. A pose is a class that sets the angles of a model's parts, or transforms the whole body, while an ability says when it plays.

Page	What it covers
this page	playing an animation from an ability, and whether a technique needs one at all
Choosing a pose	the base mod's poses, which ones can be held, and why a charge is not a pause
Writing an animation	a custom pose, its registration, and the traps in writing one
Animations on morphs	making a technique show on a full-form Zoan model
Hands and armour	hiding the first-person hand and the armour during an animation

AnimationComponent

private final AnimationComponent animationComponent = new AnimationComponent(this);

public MyAbility(AbilityCore<MyAbility> core) {
    super(core);
    this.addComponents(this.animationComponent);
}

private void onUseEvent(LivingEntity entity, IAbility ability) {
    this.animationComponent.start(entity, ModAnimations.POINT_RIGHT_ARM, 10);
}

It also offers stop, pause, resume, isPlaying, isStopped, isPaused, setPauseCondition, setStopCondition and getAnimationTick.

One-shot or held: the two start overloads

Call	Ends	Use it for
start(entity, id, ticks)	on its own, after ticks	anything instantaneous: a press, a hit, a landing
start(entity, id)	only when something calls stop	a pose held for a state that has its own end event

The two-argument start never ends by itself

A one-shot technique started with start(entity, id) leaves the pose playing forever: there is no end event to stop it from. Use the three-argument overload for everything that is not a held state, and pair every two-argument start with a stop in the end event.

The duration also sets the speed

A pose that moves computes its motion as a fraction of its duration. Halving the ticks doubles the speed of the gesture.

Does this technique want a pose?

Ask before choosing one. A pose is right when it shows something the player would otherwise miss, and "no pose" is a valid decision. It is usually wrong when:

• the trigger is routine rather than a moment: a toggle hit many times, a per-block loop, a passive tick. Poses punctuate; they do not narrate;
• the effect happens far from the user: a strike 30 blocks away, where a gesture on the caster says nothing;
• the user cannot be seen: underground, invisible, teleported on that very tick;
• the visual already carries it: an item appearing in the hand, a projectile, a visible line;
• the cooldown is very short: a pose on a half-second cooldown trembles under a held key.

One gesture per technique within a kit

Two techniques of the same fruit sharing one pose cannot be told apart. When you add a pose, check the poses already used by the rest of the kit, not only the one you are adding.

Base classes that already pose

Some library base classes start an animation for their subclasses, so a subclass does not add its own for the same moment:

Base class	Plays
ZoneAbility	RYU_NO_IBUKI during the charge, unless allowAnimation is false
StompAbility	AIM_SNIPER during the charge, when isStuckWhileCharging()
OceanAbility	CROSSED_ARMS during the charge
TransmutationAbility	the pose returned by getShootAnimation()
GrabAbility	the pose returned by getHoldAnimation(), for the whole hold

InstantDashAbility stops its animation on cooldown

It never starts one, but its cooldown event stops its animationComponent right after the teleport. An arrival animation has to start after that: see Movement.