Animated Props

Emotes can move items and blocks around: spin the sword you're holding, throw something in the air, put a block next to you. The Zelda emote does it with whatever you hold.

How it works

Any bone that isn't part of the player is a prop bone. You animate it like any other bone (rotation, position, scale), and props in pack.json says which item it shows.

graph LR
    A["prop bone in Blockbench<br>(item_right)"] --> B["props in pack.json<br>item_right: held"] --> C["the held item<br>moves with the bone"]

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The Template already has a bone for each spot, with a placeholder cube so you see it move:

Bone	Hangs on	Where it rests
item_right	right hand	in the fist, exactly where held items are
item_left	left hand	in the fist
prop_body	torso	centered in the torso
prop_head	head	centered in the head
prop	the ground	half a block above the feet, so a block stands on the ground

The pack.json part

"juggle": {
  "props": {
    "item_right": "held",
    "sword": { "item": "held_right", "attach": "root", "display": "hand" },
    "prop": "minecraft:oak_stairs"
  }
}

Writing just a value ("item_right": "held") is the same as { "item": "held" }.

Field	Default	What it is
item	held	what it shows, see below
attach	from the bone name	what the bone hangs on: right_hand, left_hand, body, head or root
display	hand on hands, none elsewhere	how the item is drawn
parent, pivot		for nested props, see below

item:

minecraft:cake - spawns that item
held - the item in the hand the prop hangs on, else the main hand
held_right, held_left - the item in that hand
held_mainhand, held_offhand - the item in that hand
none - shows nothing, for bones that only carry other props

attach comes from the bone's name if you leave it out: right or left in it means that hand, head the head, body or torso the torso, anything else root. root is the ground under the player, it turns with the player but ignores the body bone.

display:

hand - like a held item
none - the plain model, blocks are a full block big
fixed - like in an item frame
ground - like a dropped item
head - like on a head

Things to know

• A held item that a prop moves leaves the hand, so it doesn't show twice. An empty hand just shows nothing.
• Scale 0 hides a prop. Scale it back up to show it later.
• Hand props blend in and out from the hand like the rest of the emote, the others pop in and out with it.
• Throwing and catching: hang the item on root and keyframe its path from the hand, through the air and back. A prop hangs on one thing for the whole emote, it can't switch from the hand to the ground.
• At most 8 props per emote.
• Props are only drawn, nobody really holds, drops or loses anything.
• Keep the pivots of the template's prop bones (or write the new one in pivot). A prop rests where its bone's pivot is.

Nested props

Fully optional, most emotes never need this.

The game doesn't read your Blockbench model, only the animation, so it doesn't know which bone sits in which. If a prop bone is nested in another prop bone, tell it with parent. It's useful for:

Spinning on top of a pose - a child bone spins freely while the parent holds the pose, no gimbal lock
Another turning point - e.g. a sword turning around its middle instead of the grip, give the child its own pivot
Keyframes and Molang apart - the path keyframed on the parent, a Molang loop on the child

The Zelda emote does the first one:

"zelda_item_get": {
  "props": {
    "item_right": "none",
    "item_right_spin": { "parent": "item_right", "pivot": [-6, 12, -6] }
  }
}

graph TD
    A["item_right<br>item: none<br><i>holds the pose up high</i>"] --> B["item_right_spin<br>item: held<br><i>spins around its own pivot</i>"]

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item_right holds the pose and shows nothing, item_right_spin shows the held item and spins around a point in front of the fist.

• pivot is copied straight from Blockbench. Without it, it's the parent's pivot.
• A nested prop only turns around its pivot, the item stays where the top prop rests, like in Blockbench.
• Parents can be nested again, as long as no prop ends up being its own parent.
• query.life_time keeps counting while the emote holds its last frame, so a Molang spin on the child keeps going.