How to Make Your Player Model Play a Custom Animation In-Game

Getting an animation into the game

Player Animation Library does not ship with any animations of its own, so the first step is always producing an animation file. Author it in Blender or Blockbench and export it as GeckoLib or Bedrock-format JSON. The animation must target the vanilla player skeleton (or your own custom bones) so the library knows which parts to move.

Place the exported JSON where the library can find it — typically a resource pack or a mod's asset folder that the library scans on load. Once the file is present, the library registers it as an available animation that can be referenced by name.

Triggering the animation

Because the library is a framework, it does not add a keybind or command by itself. To actually see the animation, you need either a companion mod that calls the library's runtime API, or you write a small integration that plays the animation when a condition is met (for example, when the player is sprinting or holding a specific item).

In that integration, call the library's play function with the animation's registered name and the player entity. The library then drives the player model each frame, blending the animation over the vanilla pose. If nothing plays, double-check that the animation name matches exactly and that the file loaded without errors in the log.