Minecraft skin poses

18 named poses, six adjustable joints and animation frames, all from the URL. Here is how the pose system works and what every pose looks like.

One parameter

Posing a skin should not require a 3D program. With Skin Render it is one query parameter on the body (or bust) render:

https://skinrender.dev/render/069a79f444e94726a5befca90e38aaf5/body?pose=wave

default

wave

sit

sneak

dab

The names are plain English and each one is a complete set of rotations for the head, the torso, both arms and both legs. Because the render is generated on request from the player’s current skin, the image stays correct when they change skin, and because the URL is deterministic it is cached everywhere along the way.

Every pose

All 18 poses on the default Steve skin. Poses marked anim are cycles and accept frame.

• 
  default

  Standing still, arms and legs straight.

• 
  walk anim

  Mid-stride walk cycle; use frame to pick the phase.

• 
  run anim

  Wider, faster stride with a slight forward lean.

• 
  wave anim

  Right arm raised and waving.

• 
  sit

  Sitting down, legs forward, as on a minecart or chair.

• 
  sneak

  Crouched, as when sneaking in game.

• 
  point

  Right arm pointing straight ahead.

• 
  dab

  The dab.

• 
  zombie

  Both arms straight out in front.

• 
  tpose

  Arms straight out to the sides.

• 
  cheer

  Both arms raised, head tipped back.

• 
  think

  Hand at the chin, head tilted.

• 
  flex

  Both arms flexed upward.

• 
  salute

  Right hand at the brow.

• 
  dance anim

  One arm up, one down, hips turned.

• 
  punch

  Right arm thrown forward, torso twisted.

• 
  shrug

  Arms out, palms up, head tilted.

• 
  jump

  Arms back, legs tucked, as at the top of a jump.

How the pose system works

The player model has six movable parts: head, torso (which carries the head and arms with it), left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. Each part rotates around three axes, described with the aviation words the rest of the API uses: pitch (forward and back), yaw (twist) and roll (out to the side). Six parts times three axes is eighteen numbers, and that is all a pose is. pose=wave is simply a preset that fills in those eighteen numbers; default sets them all to zero.

Any of the eighteen can be set directly with a parameter named after the part and the axis, such as rightArmPitch, headYaw or leftLegRoll. Because pitch is by far the most used, the four limbs have short aliases: rightArm=90 means rightArmPitch=90. All angles are degrees (radians with units=rad) and wrap around.

• Positive pitch swings a limb forward; on the head it tips the chin down. rightArm=90 is straight out in front, rightArm=180 straight up.
• Positive roll moves a limb outward, away from the body, which is how the T-pose is made: leftArmRoll=90&rightArmRoll=90.
• Yaw twists a part on its own axis, most useful on the head (headYaw=-25 to glance sideways) and the torso (bodyYaw=20 for a turned upper body while the legs stay put).

Combining a pose with overrides

Named poses and explicit joints combine: start from the pose, then any joint you name replaces that joint only. This is how you get a wave with the head turned toward the hand, a sit with crossed-looking legs, or a salute with a slight lean.

You can also skip the named pose entirely and build from zero. A “thinking, leaning on a wall” pose, for instance, is a handful of parameters:

https://skinrender.dev/render/853c80ef3c3749fdaa49938b674adae6/body?yaw=-30&headPitch=8&headYaw=15&bodyRoll=-6&rightArmPitch=-110&rightArmRoll=-20&leftLegRoll=12

Note the last parameter: yaw without a part name is the camera, not a joint. Camera parameters describe where you look from; joint parameters describe the figure. They are independent, so the same pose can be shown from any angle.

Animation and GIF frames

walk, run, dance, wave are cycles, and frame (0 to 1) picks where in the cycle the figure is. Render a sequence of frames and stitch them into a GIF with ImageMagick, ffmpeg or Pillow; the poses documentation has the exact commands. Two rules make it look right: keep every frame at the same size, and add fit=false so the camera does not re-frame each frame around the moving limbs.

Poses on the bust

The bust render shows head, torso and arms, so upper-body poses read well there and the legs are simply not drawn. think, salute, shrug, wave and point make good portraits; fov=40&pitch=-10 adds a little drama. Leg parameters are accepted but have no visible effect on a bust.

https://skinrender.dev/render/069a79f444e94726a5befca90e38aaf5/bust?size=320&pitch=-10&fov=40&pose=shrug

Try it

The playground has a select for every pose, a slider for every joint and the frame slider for the animated ones, with a live preview and the resulting URL ready to copy. The full reference is the poses documentation.