Minecraft has a charm of its own, but you can further level it up with a few animation mods. Whether it’s making the combat moves smoother, making every mob livelier and expressive, or adding realistic particle effects, the animation mods in Minecraft can help in achieving all of them. These additions can make your world feel more satisfying to play as each character has a personality of their own. So, check out these 10 best animation mods in Minecraft to make Minecraft brand new again.
1. What Are They Up To (WATUT)
What Are They Up To doesn’t focus on walking or combat animations in the game, but rather focuses on player activities that previously had no visual feedback. This includes actions like typing, using a crafting table, or fiddling with items in a chest.
You can see players performing actions and gestures, and therefore, it is a game-changer in Minecraft multiplayer. You can instantly tell whether a friend is AFK or about to text something. So, the world will have more immersive moments rather than asking “what are you all doing?”
2. Fresh Animations
Fresh Animations is a staple animation mod in Minecraft and is perfect for making your mobs come to life. This mod can overhaul the vanilla creatures and mobs in Minecraft, giving them expressive faces, smoother limbs, and idle motions. This can make villages, forests, caves, and all biomes with various structures far more believable.
Additionally, the original Minecraft style is kept as natural as possible to make it look like an upgrade rather than a total redesign. You can pair this mod with Optifine and Iris to include shaders and make the surroundings look beautiful.
3. Panda’s Falling Trees
Enough about the character and mob animations, the Panda’s Falling Trees mod animates the logs when chopping a tree. So, you will notice that a tree tilts and falls instead of instantly breaking up into floating blocks. Moreover, you can also hear the tweaking sounds while the tree collapses to the ground.
If you were wondering, this mod doesn’t change how trees generate in Minecraft. So, the mod is compatible with most of the world’s generation packs, and you won’t face many issues like glitches and game breaks. With this mod, the dark forest, taiga, and tundra biomes can feel immersive with the visually falling trees.
4. Blue’s Better Zombies
Blue’s Better Zombies gives the undead a complete makeover with new models, animation sets, and creepy extras. The zombies can now crawl, have cut-off limbs, unique death animations, and even some special appearances like the mythical Herobrine.
This mod adds a horror-style experience, perfect for the hardcore servers, a special Halloween experience, or something to go with the best horror mods in Minecraft. The nighttime in Minecraft will feel dangerous again, where the zombies will stalk you, come crawling, and even crumble in style.
5. Sitting+
Sitting+ is a unique Minecraft animation mod that adds a small, convenient feature that never existed before. Yes, as the name suggests, this mod lets players sit on the ground with custom animations. Moreover, your sitting poses vary depending on the items you are holding, making your roleplay world dynamic.
This mod is perfect for taking screenshots and making thumbnails, or simply for in-game photoshoots. So, if you and your friends are looking to take a group picture to remind you of the good old Minecraft days, Sitting+ is a perfect mod to install.
6. Not Enough Animations
Not Enough Animations mod focuses on the third-person visuals that can better reflect what you’re doing in the game. Whether you’re eating, blocking with a shield, or sneaking up to a chest in the Ancient Cities, every animation matches your action.
This is another solid choice for the multiplayer game modes, where your friends can actually see what you’re up to instead of a statue figure holding an item. It can pair with other animation packs and act as a bridge between the third-person and first-person visuals.
7. Detailed Animations
The Detailed Animations mod focuses on your character, adding a huge variety of motions like walking, hop-running, climbing, landing, swimming, and many more. Even during rainy weather or a thunderstorm, you’ll find the character performing idle animations and poses.
This looks way cooler in the third-person mode, as you can see every movement with a touch of parkour. Whether you’re performing Elytra flights, jumping off cliffs, or simply traversing a difficult terrain, these actions look way more dynamic, as if it’s something from a high-budget Minecraft trailer.
8. Smooth GUI
Smooth GUI is a user interface-focused mod instead of working on the players and mobs. When you’re opening a chest, crafting table, furnace, or other interactive blocks, the GUI pops up with smooth animations instead of an abrupt window.
This improves the quality of the game and refines the already installed animation mods rather than introducing anything new. So, fighting mobs can feel way smoother rather than tampering with the actual gameplay.
9. Mas Effects
This one is a compact mod that improves the particle effects in Minecraft. So, for all items like Mace smashes, throwing an Ender Pearl, or killing a mob, you notice a fresh, dramatic animation. For instance, smashing any enemy with the Mace throws off block particles everywhere, or killing any mob can bring out a death smoke animation.
Since the focus is purely on particles, it stacks perfectly with similar mods like Fresh Animations or Blue’s Better Zombies. This way, combat will feel more impactful than what you see in vanilla Minecraft.
10. Reanimated Blue
Reanimated Blue is a mob animation mod that is a strong alternative to the Fresh Animations mod in Minecraft. Once you install this mod, all movement and models for the enemies and even some animals are updated. Additionally, they even have some unique death and falling animations.
Apart from the animations added to animals, you can also see some realistic physics while walking, killing mobs, or even jumping off a cliff. Installing this mod can give players a fun experience rather than going with the single choice of Fresh Animations.
That completes the list of all the best animation mods in Minecraft. So, which one do you like the most? Tell us in the comments below.
Most of the animation mods are fairly light, and although they do add a few extra frames and effects, these mods can work on all PCs without affecting the FPS a lot.
Yes, most of the animation mods can work with shaders and are compatible with them. with minimal graphical glitches.
Pranav Maytray
