Intro to the Animation API

The Forge Animation API lets you animate JSON (and B3D) models. Before you start reading this, you should know how vanilla JSON models are created, and should have read the documentation on blockstates.

The Animation API is made up of two main components: armature files and animation state machine (ASM) files. Armature files define joints and clips for JSON files. Joints are names for cubes in the model file with weights (see the page on armatures for more info), while clips are a set of transformations to apply to joints over time (think of a clip from a movie for example). ASM files define the various states an animation can be in, as well as what transitions exist between those states. They also define the parameters for an animation (functions which return a floating point number), which are generally used as inputs to clips, but can also trigger events. Events are essentially a way to receive in-code notifications when the animation reaches a certain point or to trigger transitions.

Filesystem Structure Conventions

ASM Files are normally stored in the asms/block for blocks or asms/item for items and so on. You specify where to load them from, so their location is really up to you.

Armature files must be stored in the armatures folder. They are looked up by taking the path to your model file, removing models/ and taking whats left and prepending armatures/, so a model in models/block/test.json becomes armatures/block/test.json.