Words that are blue are links and might lead to helpful sites if you're lost in the reading. (:
Words that are can be hovered over and will show an example of the described text
Special thanks to ItsMwamOffi for reaching out for help with skins in the first place. This wouldn't exist without you. (:
Special thanks to Miku-666 (NessieHax) and Rone and Bomby research help.
Special thanks to Meshkiukas_, Quack, and LevelStorm for some input for improving the site.
As you can see here:
The arms are animated normally,
The legs are animated normally,
All of the overlays and parts are displayed normally,
What isn't observable is that the skin is using the classic skin format, with a base resolution of 64x32,
The crouch animation would also play as normal.
All Minecraft Console Edition skins will default as such.
However, all of these values (and more!) can be overriden on any skin with a simple ANIM tag. This is how 4J Studios created all of those custom models and effects for their skins.
The ANIM tag (short for Animation) is found in Minecraft Console Edition PCK files. It can also be found on animated textures for tiles, such as for Fire or the Clock item, but this document focuses purely on the ANIM tag that appears on skins. A dedicated document focusing on animated tile textures can be found here!
The ANIM Tag can be anywhere between 1 to 8 nibbles long (following the "0x" prefix), which measures to 4 bytes, and is read from right to left. These hexadecimal values determine how the game displays the skin and, contrary to the name, handles more than just animation.
It's much easier to imagine the values as binary values or flags/bits. Each nibble is made up of 4 flags, and those 8 digits make up the final ANIM value.
| Flags | Hexadecimal Value | Decimal Value |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 | 0 |
0 |
| 0001 | 1 | 1 |
| 0010 |
2 | 2 |
| 0011 | 3 | 3 |
| 0100 | 4 |
4 |
| 0101 | 5 | 5 |
| 0110 | 6 |
6 |
| 0111 | 7 |
7 |
| 1000 | 8 |
8 |
| 1001 | 9 | 9 |
| 1010 | A |
10 |
| 1011 | B | 11 |
| 1100 | C | 12 |
| 1101 | D | 13 |
| 1110 | E |
14 |
| 1111 | F | 15 |
When parts are reffered to as "disabled", this only refers to the MAIN box for the part in question. You can still add new boxes for that part. This clears some space on the texture for custom boxes for the skin. For example, you can disable the head, which will make it invisible, and then you can model your own on top. The space originally used for the head on your skin will now be completely unused and free for you to customize.
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000
- 0001
- 0010
- 0100
- 1000