Cameras

Cameras are positional anchors that track a specific point in space as your rig animates. They are useful for attaching player view effects, executing commands at specific view positions, or tracking a point of interest relative to the rig.

Installing the Camera Plugin

Animated Java does not include camera nodes by default. To use cameras, you must install the Camera Plugin from the Blockbench plugin library.

Entity Creation

A Camera always creates a minecraft:item_display entity when exported. Unlike bone entities, cameras are not passengers of the root entity — they are free-floating entities that are repositioned every tick by the rig’s tick function using smooth teleportation (teleport_duration: 2).

Their position and rotation is stored as {px, py, pz, rx, ry} in the rig’s data storage entry under entry.data.cameras.<name>, and updated each tick from the current animation frame.

What Cameras Are Good For

• Spectator-mode view anchors — Teleport a spectator player to the camera entity each tick to get a first-person view from within the rig.
• Positional effects — Spawn particles, play sounds, or run commands at an animated position that isn’t tied to a physical bone.
• Animation-driven targeting — Point the camera at something of interest and have the engine track it automatically as the animation plays.

Camera Config

Cameras have no additional configuration dialog beyond what is set in Blockbench. Position, rotation, and animation are controlled in the standard Blockbench viewport and timeline.

Accessing Camera Entities

Use the as_camera utility function:

#ARGS: {name: string, command: string}
execute as @e[tag=my_pack.my_rig.root] run function my_pack:my_rig/as_camera {name: "eye", command: "ride @s mount @p"}

Notes

• Cameras do not render any visible geometry in Minecraft — the item_display entity they create is invisible. They are purely positional anchors.
• Only position and two-axis rotation (rx, ry) are stored per-frame. Camera roll is not supported.