Content

Emotes

An emote is an animation played on a player, in their own skin: a wave, a dance, a handshake. While it plays, the player is hidden and a copy of them (a rig) performs it in their place. When it ends they are put back exactly where they were.

/emote wave
/emote handshake Steve
/emote stop

Tab completion lists every emote on the server, and for an emote that needs a partner it offers the players who could join in.

Every player needs a rig#

An emote has two parts:

• The rig is a model of the player, cut out of their skin. It is made automatically.
• The animation is keyframes, made once. It moves bones by name, so the same wave fits every player.

Rigs travel inside the resource pack, so the pack needs one for each player who emotes. RP Engine builds them itself from the skin of everyone who joins. A player joining for the first time shows as a default figure until that rebuild finishes (you often notice it when they sit in a seat or a vehicle). The new pack goes to whoever joins next, and to players already online the next time they are sent a pack: nobody's game reloads just because someone walked in.

Building rigs needs Minecraft 1.21.4 or newer. On older servers, rigs that arrive in a Studio push still work.

Getting emotes onto a server#

Make them in Studio, then send the pack straight to your game (a push):

1. 1

   Pair

   In Studio, open your pack and press Sync to get a pairing code. In game, run /rp sync <code>. See Testing on your server.

2. 2

   Push

   Push from Studio. The pack arrives with the emotes in it, and rigs are built for everyone on that sync.

3. 3

   Emote

   Type /emote and press Tab.

Or write them by hand: see Hand-authored emotes.

/rp emotes lists what the server has right now. If somebody joined after the push, push again.

Sharing a push#

A sync belongs to one player. To let someone else test the same pack, add them to yours:

Models inside an emote#

An emote can carry a pack model as a prop: a chair, a sword, a barbell. If part of the model moves, it plays on the emote's own clock, so a lifted barbell stays in the lifter's hands.

Emotes with a cast#

Some emotes take more than one person, like a handshake or a hug. The lead names the others, and everyone is moved into position, turned to face each other, and put back afterwards. Nobody is moved until every participant and spot has been checked, and the emote ends for everyone at once.

Invited players are asked first, with accept and deny buttons (they run /emotereply, which every player can use, so anyone can refuse).

Movement sets#

A movement set is a group of emotes you wear rather than play once: a walk, a run, an idle, used for as long as you have it on. You put one on the same way:

/emote strut

Groups and single emotes share one list of names, so they can't clash.

Walk cycles follow the player, not the clock#

Walk, sprint and crouch-walk cycles play according to how far the player has moved, not how much time has passed. Standing still, the legs stop; on soul sand they slow; with a speed potion they keep up. Feet don't slide.

Draw each cycle for Minecraft's normal pace and it plays as drawn:

Idle, crouching in place and jumping play at their drawn speed. Changing pace doesn't restart anything: the engine picks up the new cycle on the same leg and blends between them.

What stops an emote#

Being hit, moving (for most emotes), /emote stop, or a plugin (EmoteStartEvent can be cancelled, and Emotes.stop ends one). Any invisibility the player had before comes back afterwards, minus the time the emote took.

Playing one automatically, such as on join#

RP Engine has no "on join" trigger for emotes. Use a plugin that runs commands when a player joins, and have it run /emote <name> as that player (the command only plays on whoever runs it), or call engine.emotes() from your own plugin. Give the rebuild a few seconds for a first-time player, or they emote as the default figure. A VFX can be played the same way with /rp cast.

Hand-authored emotes#

A pack can carry its own emotes in an emotes/ folder. One file can hold as many as you like, keyed by name:

{
  "wave": {
    "name": "Wave",
    "length": 1.2,
    "loop": false,
    "animators": {
      "rightArm": { "rotation": [
        { "time": 0,   "value": [0, 0, 0] },
        { "time": 0.3, "value": [-160, 0, -20], "interpolation": "smooth" },
        { "time": 1.2, "value": [0, 0, 0] }
      ] }
    }
  }
}

This is exactly what Studio's emote editor exports, so the easy way is to make it there and paste the entry. YAML works as well as JSON.

Emote names are shared across the whole server, not per pack, because /emote wave uses the bare name. Two packs both defining wave is an error, so prefix yours (mypack_wave) if other people will install your pack.

Props#

Carry a model with props, beside animators:

"props": [
  { "id": "right", "modelId": "mypack:skate_right", "attach": "rightShin",
    "offset": [2, -16, 0], "scale": 1 }
]

BetterModel's player animations load as emotes too. Drop its plugin folder in and every animation in players/ becomes one. See Moving from BetterModel.

Hand-authored emotes play on the rigs the engine bakes, which needs Minecraft 1.21.4 or newer. On older servers they load but play on nobody.