Poses & Equipment

Poses let an attachment react to what its bearer is doing: ears that fold in sleep, pin back in a fight, droop with exhaustion, or flatten under a helmet. Each pose entry is active while its state or condition holds, and its rotations ease in and out over a transition time rather than snapping.

Poses are evaluated on each viewer’s client every frame, using synced per-entity state, so a whole village’s ears fold at bedtime without any extra network traffic.

The Poses Block

"poses": {
  "sleeping": {
    "bones": { "left_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, -35] }, "right_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, 35] } },
    "transition": 10
  },
  "wearing_helmet": {
    "bones": { "left_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, -70] }, "right_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, 70] } },
    "transition": 4
  },
  "when": [
    {
      "if": { "type": "pheno:mood", "is": ["sad", "depressed"] },
      "bones": { "left_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, -28] }, "right_ear": { "rotation": [0, 0, 28] } },
      "transition": 40
    }
  ]
}

Every key except when is a named state. when entries carry any Pheno condition as if.

Entry field	Type	Notes
bones	object	Per-bone rotations in degrees, in the .geo.json’s own convention. Copy angles straight from posing the bone in Blockbench.
rotation	[x, y, z]	Turns the whole attachment at its anchor instead (definition convention, like the top-level rotation).
transition	number	Ease time constant in ticks, in and out. Defaults to 4.

Active entries apply in authored order; when several touch the same bone, the last one wins. On a mirrored point the pose mirrors automatically. Poses compose with morphs, life stages, physics, and keyframe clips.

Named States

State	Active while
sleeping	The bearer sleeps.
sitting	The bearer rides or sits.
sprinting	Sprinting.
sneaking	Crouching.
swimming	Swimming.
gliding	Fall-flying (elytra or the elytra_flight ability).
moving	Walking or running.
hurt	In hurt flash.
attacking	Swinging or aggressive.
panicking	An MCA villager’s panic state.
working	An MCA villager runs a job chore.
wearing_helmet	Anything occupies the head slot.
wearing_chestplate	Anything occupies the chest slot.
wearing_leggings	Anything occupies the legs slot.
wearing_boots	Anything occupies the feet slot.

/townstead attachment doctor flags unknown state names, unparseable conditions, and pose bones missing from the geometry.

Condition Gates

when conditions evaluate on the client against synced state. Mood (pheno:mood), gender (pheno:gender), hunger, thirst, and energy are entity-tracked and work everywhere; time, weather, and biome conditions read the level. A condition that needs server-only data simply never activates. Note that pheno:mood matches villagers only; pheno:gender matches villagers and players with MCA data, and never matches other entities.

Equipment Awareness

Three ways an attachment can react to armour, from gentlest to bluntest:

1. Nothing declared. The attachment punches through the armour model. Right for tails and most body attachments.
2. A wearing_* pose. The attachment folds beneath the item and eases back when it is removed. Right for ears under a helm.
3. hides_under in the definition. The whole attachment vanishes while the slot is occupied. Right for horns that cannot share space with a helmet. See Attachment Files.