Player Animator

Player Animator is a library mod created by KosmX. An animation library enabling mods to add custom player animations, required by Better Combat and other combat mods. As a library mod it concentrates on shared code that other mods build on, and it has been downloaded around 35 million times, which puts it among the options players reach for in this space.

Player Animator is built for players installing combat or emote mods that depend on it. It is an animation library that lets other mods drive custom player-model animations, so it is installed as their dependency. It is approachable enough to drop into a world and use right away, with little setup required.

The mod is available for Forge, Fabric, NeoForge, and Quilt, so it fits a range of modpacks and launchers. It currently supports Minecraft 1.20.1 and 1.21.1, spanning the 1.20.1 to 1.21.1 releases. It runs on both the client and the server, so on a multiplayer server every player who connects needs it installed alongside the server itself.

Player Animator works particularly well alongside Better Combat. Because it ships for both Fabric and Forge-family loaders, it slots into most popular modpacks regardless of which side they are built on.

As a library mod, Player Animator adds no content of its own and has a negligible footprint, it exists to support the mods that depend on it.

If you are comparing options, a similar mod worth a look is (no direct alternative, it is a dependency library). They overlap in purpose, so most players pick whichever suits their loader and pack.