Animation controllers: giving our entity an attack animation;

Attack Animation

First, let's create the animation itself in Blockbench. Choose File>Open Model>yourModelFile and choose the Animation workspace in the top right corner. Now, unlike the walk animation we already created, our attack animation will consist of a single frame, because Animation Controllers have a "transitions" feature that blends two following animations smoothly. After you're done, name your animation animation.entityname.attack, choose Export Animations and replace your old animations file in res/animations.

Note: you can find Animations documented on bedrock.dev/r/MoLang and bedrock.dev/r/Animations. For Behavior Animations, refer to bedrock.dev/r/Entity Events.

Now for the actual

Animation Controller.

Create res/animation_controllers/entityName.animation.controller.json. Let's go over the overall structure of an animation controller:

Let's go through the states themselves:

A note from the author: The showcased animation controller is a great example of a resource animation controller, also being a great way to implement attack animations. There are some less efficient or much more complicated methods to achieve the same goal out there, but I've been using this one ever since I, myself, found out about it.

Behavior Animations

Animations and animation controllers are typically defined in the Resource pack. However, there's a certain type of those files that are to be located in the Behavior pack. They are thus called Behavior- (or server- ) Animations.

Behavior animations are able to execute slash(/) commands and to trigger events from the entity behavior file.The syntax is similar to normal resource animations and animation controllers, which are used to run visual animations. Behavior Animations are located in bhv/animations/ and Behavior animation controllers in bhv/animation_controllers/ . The file name is not important, but the animation identifiers are.

Behavior Animation;

Here's an example of a Behavior Animation, that executes multiple slash commands on an entity:

Here's an example

Behavior Animation Controller

, that can be used to track AFK players. (You can scroll the code box for better readability)

You can also trigger a behavior event (defined in the entity behavior file>"events": {}) on the entity which runs the command. Here, on the "0.2" keyframe, the entity runs the /tag command and then runs the "jdot:tagged_alt" event, which removes or adds some component groups. For more info see the Behavior events definitions Page.

"0.2": [

"/tag @s add TAG",

"@s jdot:tagged_alt"

]

Defining behavior animation' Shortnames in the Behavior file;

Just like resource animations and animation controllers, Behavior animations and animation controllers need to be assigned a shortname and called in "scripts>animate". For resource ones, it's done in the .entity file (res/entity/entityname.entity.json), but for behavior ones it's done directly in the entity behavior file: bhv/entities/entityname.json/"description: {}. (For more information on the behavior file and the "description" object see the Entity behavior definition Page.

Here's an example:

You can find out more about animation controllers by checking out these guides:

1. bedrock.dev Entity Events documentation - this one is written in a tutorial form;

2. Other documentations related with animations: bedrock.dev/r/MoLang, bedrock.dev/r/Animations.

3. SirLich's wiki.bedrock.dev Entity Commands Tutorial(a.k.a Bhv Animations);

Your progress so far:

What you've done:

• Learned to use client Animation Controllers;

• Added an attack animation and AI to your custom entity;

• Learned to execute commands through server-side animations and animation controllers.

What are you to do next:

• Create custom sounds;

• Add particles to animations;

• Potentially create custom particles;