Personas

Current version: 1.2.5, paired with Animotions Dev28 and PacketEvents 2.14.0. See START-HERE.md in the Personas download. Animotions and PacketEvents are installed separately; the Personas ZIP includes neither dependency.

Give your towns, markets and lobbies a cast of familiar faces. Personas combines skinned NPCs, Animotions animations and reusable scenes with an in-game editor.

Open the studio

Run /personas studio, or simply /personas. Use Create NPC to make a character from scratch, or Create Scene to begin a group. You do not need an existing NPC or preset. These creation controls require personas.admin.

To create your first NPC:

1. Stand where you want it to appear and choose Create NPC.
2. Choose Rename, enter a name in the private chat prompt, then return to the editor.
3. Open Skins. Choose Use my Minecraft skin, Default skin, or Find skin and enter a Java username or MineSkin link.
4. Open Animation, choose Once, Loop or Hold, then select an animation.
5. Return to the actor editor and choose Place Here.

The NPC stays hidden while you configure it. Skin, name, movement and animation edits save automatically. The Commands & clicks editor has its own Save button so you can review a command first. Closing the menu keeps your draft: return through Placed / Drafts and select it to continue. Place Here publishes that same draft at your current position and facing, and adds its configured design to the Scene library. It does not create a second NPC. The first actor’s name becomes the design’s title.

For a group, choose Create Scene, then Add NPC. The source chooser offers New NPC, Existing NPC and Saved preset. Configure each actor, then choose Place Here. You can use this flow even when the existing-NPC and preset lists are empty.

The Scene library also contains three starting designs on first launch: Town square, A quiet conversation and Seated break. Left-click a design to open it, then choose Place at your feet on the right. Right-click a library card to show its portrait and details without opening it.

These starting scenes use Wave, Arms_Crossed, Speech, Agree and Sit when those animations are available in your Animotions library. If an animation is missing when Personas first creates the designs, that actor starts without an idle animation. You can choose one in the editor. Seated break contains the seated character; place it on a bench or seat from your own build.

Arrange a scene

Open Placed / Drafts. Each entry shows its scene name, world, position and active, paused or draft state. Select one, then use Place Here to bring it to your position or On Off to pause and resume a published scene. A draft stays hidden until you choose Place Here. The arrows above the actors turn the scene in 15-degree steps. Add NPC, Save and Remove are separate buttons on the right.

To remove NPCs from the world, choose Remove scene from world in that editor and confirm. To remove just one character, open the character and choose Remove actor. Removing the last character also removes its empty placement. Both actions keep any saved design available in the library. Removing an unpublished draft leaves no saved design behind. Delete saved design is a separate action in the design view; it keeps existing placed copies.

Back stays at the bottom left and Close at the far right. Hover a control to read its action before clicking. Confirmations identify what will disappear; Cancel returns without changing it.

Select a character to adjust its skin, idle animation, name visibility and look-at-player setting. Position buttons move the character in 0.25-block steps relative to the scene. Turning the whole scene rotates those offsets together, keeping everyone in place. Move to my position also works on individual characters.

The skin library shows skins already used by your NPCs. Use my Minecraft skin copies your current skin. Default skin restores the default. Find skin accepts a Minecraft Java username or MineSkin link in a private chat prompt. Type cancel to return without changing anything. The prompt expires after 60 seconds, and opening another inventory cancels it. A failed lookup returns to the skin menu so you can retry. If the actor changes while the lookup is running, the older result is discarded. Selected skins and animations have a glow and a Selected label. Existing click and interaction actions are retained.

In the animation selector, choose Once, Loop or Hold on the right. The selected mode has a gold underline. Once plays the configured entry, action and exit one time. Loop plays the entry once and repeats the action; Hold plays the entry and action, then keeps the final pose. Changing the mode of the selected animation saves it immediately for that actor. Selecting another animation keeps your chosen mode. The default is Loop. Clear stops it and cancels queued preparation immediately.

Once waits for real playback to begin, so waiting for a pack or skin does not consume it. Active loop and hold sequences continue without a periodic restart. Legacy once <seconds> command actions still repeat on their configured interval, waiting for active playback to finish; this timed repeat is separate from the studio’s Once choice. Plain legacy emote actions keep their existing idle-interval behavior.

To give a character a name, choose Rename in its actor editor. The menu closes and prompts you for a private chat reply. Enter 1–48 plain text characters without formatting, or type cancel. The prompt expires after 60 seconds; opening another inventory cancels it. A valid reply saves the name and returns to the actor editor. If another edit changed the actor while you were typing, reopen its editor and try again.

The command remains available:

/personas scene rename square actor1 Market Trader

The editor shows the placement and member IDs needed for that command.

Save your own scenes

New drafts become reusable designs when you choose Place Here. Later edits to a placed copy save automatically, but do not change the design or its other copies. Save is available after publication and stores the currently configured placement as a new reusable design; you do not need it after every edit.

To capture several existing standalone NPCs together, stand at the point that should become the scene’s centre and use:

/personas scene capture market trader customer guard
/personas scene place market square

Capture includes each NPC’s skin, name, relative position, facing and actions. The original NPCs stay where they were. Every placement is an independent copy: changing one does not change your saved design or its other placements.

Add NPC opens the source chooser. Existing NPC copies a standalone NPC into the current scene without removing the original. Saved preset copies one of your templates. New NPC adds a fresh actor. You can then adjust its position, skin and animation in the actor editor.

Removing a design from the library keeps its existing placements. Starter designs are created on the first launch and are not restored after you remove them.

Commands

Existing creation, selection, skins, names, actions, templates and emote commands remain available. Removing an ordinary NPC requires personas.admin. Scene actor removal uses the scene’s ownership permissions and confirmation screen. Other ordinary NPC edits cannot overwrite saved scene data.

Set up commands and clicks

Open a character in Placed / Drafts, then choose Commands & clicks. For an ordinary NPC created with the existing commands, run /personas actions, select the NPC and use the same editor. /personas actions <npc-id> opens it directly. Creating or changing click actions requires personas.admin.

1. Choose Add.
2. Choose Left, Right or Either. The second row offers Sneak + Left, Sneak + Right and Sneak + Either. The selected button has a yellow underline.
3. Choose Player, Console or Message. Player commands run with the clicking player’s permissions. Console commands run with the server’s authority.
4. Choose Change text, then enter the command or message in the private chat prompt. A leading slash is optional for commands. Use %player% for the clicking player’s name and %npc% for the NPC id.
5. Review the chosen click and action kind, then choose Save.

For example, Right → Player → spawn lets players use their permitted spawn command. Sneak + Right → Message → Hello %player%! adds a greeting when they sneak and right-click.

Click an existing action to change its binding, kind or text. Delete asks you to confirm removal of that one action. Closing the action editor or choosing Back discards unsaved action edits. The private prompt expires after 60 seconds; type cancel to return without changing the text. Saved actions survive a restart and do not change the character’s skin, position or idle animation.

Either actions also run alongside the matching ordinary left/right actions. When a matching sneak binding exists, its actions replace the ordinary click actions for that sneak click; otherwise the ordinary click actions still run. Paired interaction packets are coalesced so a single click does not run its command twice.

This editor manages click commands and messages. Existing emote, pose, proximity and idle actions are preserved. For a placed scene, use Save design if you also want its edited actions available in a new reusable library copy.

Permissions

personas.scenes lets a player place designs and edit their own placements. personas.admin also allows creating NPCs and scenes, editing any placement, capturing existing NPCs and importing templates. Both permissions default to operators. Skin selection and ordinary scene controls never run player-supplied commands. Captured NPC actions retain their original behaviour, so only give administrative capture/template access to trusted builders.

Animotions and models

Scene actors use the same Animotions playback as other Personas NPCs. Emote names come directly from the installed animation library. Model attachments configured on an emote travel with its playback through that shared renderer; Personas does not need a separate copy of the model or a second resource pack.

When an NPC skin is animated for the first time, the NPC stays visible while Animotions prepares its body textures. Playback begins automatically once all 11 parts are ready. A new skin needs the configured MineSkin service unless its prepared parts are already cached. If preparation fails, the NPC remains in its normal static form; the plugin does not substitute full heads for missing body parts. Clearing the emote also cancels any preparation still waiting to start. Changing to another skin may need another preparation step.

A first-person model belongs to a player’s view. Use your normal NPC player-command action to start a configured Animotions first-person example for the interacting player. It is not an NPC costume. The Animotions guide covers model imports and attachment setup.

Storage and installation

Install the updated Personas JAR beside Animotions and PacketEvents, then restart. This build targets Paper 1.21.5 through 26.3; unknown future protocols are not assumed compatible. Use Java 21 for 1.21.x and the Java version required by your newer Paper release. For Minecraft 26.3, install the released PacketEvents 2.14.0 Spigot plugin and run Java 25. Use Personas 1.2.5 with Animotions Dev28. The exact protocol gate remains enabled; automated compatibility coverage is not a live client/provider acceptance test. SQLite is resolved by Paper when the plugin loads. Keep the existing Personas data folder; ordinary NPCs and templates keep their existing storage.

Scenes are saved in plugins/Personas/scenes.yml. The previous successful file is retained as scenes.yml.backup. Stop the server before editing scene data by hand. If Personas detects a file changed outside the editor, it preserves that file and asks for a restart before accepting further scene changes.

Each scene supports 32 actors. The library supports 128 designs, with up to 128 placements and 256 placed actors in total. Paused placements and hidden drafts count toward that total. Scene members must remain within 64 blocks of their anchor. These limits bound the editor and storage workload; they are not a server performance recommendation.

Pixel-art themes

The Scene library shows 30 designs in a six-column grid, with a separate portrait and details on the right. Left-click a design to open it; right-click to select its portrait. The bottom bar has labelled Scenes, Placed / Drafts, Create NPC and Create Scene buttons. Previous, page information and Next sit above the preview; unavailable arrows are dimmed. Close is the cross at the far right. Creating NPCs and scenes, copying existing NPCs and importing templates require administrator access.

The studio uses vanilla-grey panels with recessed item slots and raised text buttons. The full width of each button is clickable. Position controls have visible X, Y and Z labels. The skin and animation selectors show 24 entries per page. Selected tabs and playback modes have a gold underline; selected skins and animation cards have a glow and a Selected label.

Animation cards show small posed 3D miniatures when Animotions has generated them and the current pack is loaded. Set previews.inventory-style to animated in Animotions for moving 16-pixel thumbnails instead, then rebuild and deliver the pack. They use the preview skin configured in Animotions; selecting an animation keeps the NPC’s own skin. Previews are cached and included in the pack. Opening the menu does not start another render job. An animation symbol remains available when a preview has not been generated.

Choose the theme in plugins/Personas/config.yml, then restart:

scenes:
  gui:
    theme: classic

Use classic for labelled vanilla-style buttons, supplied for the original Personas Edit library with icon controls, or vanilla to keep the standard menu permanently. Old navy and plum settings now use the classic palette. Your scenes remain available in every theme.

Personas adds its artwork to Animotions’ generated resource pack. Install the matching Personas and Animotions builds from the same delivery, rebuild the pack and deliver the new version to players. While the pack is unavailable, declined or still downloading, a plain inventory provides the same controls without decorative filler. An open studio switches to its pixel artwork when the verified pack is ready, preserving your current screen. It switches back if the pack becomes unavailable. If you close the studio while a change is saving, it stays closed.

If ItemsAdder, Nexo, CraftEngine or another configured provider delivers your merged pack, ensure that the final pack contains the personas assets. Animotions automatically verifies eligible HTTP(S) pack requests and waits for the player to load that revision. Packs above 64 MiB, without a SHA-1 hash, or inaccessible from the server can use previews.provider-pack-id instead. Operators opening the studio receive a short explanation while custom artwork is waiting. Do not enable an assume-loaded setting unless you deliberately manage delivery yourself.

Detected Bedrock connections use the standard inventory theme. Personas does not replace Minecraft’s global GUI textures, default font or shaders.

The current workbench controls are original pixel artwork. The supplied grey library remains an optional theme.

The product previews use the supplied ModelSteve skin. NPCs in your server keep their own selected skins; changing the showcase skin does not replace them. Copy scene-locales/en.yml to another locale file and select its name under scenes.locale to translate titles, item names and hover help. The short pixel captions on the classic panels are English.

Client support

Java players use the existing animated NPC path. Detected Bedrock players retain the existing static NPC fallback and interactions; Java animation packs are not sent to them through Personas. A backend Geyser/Floodgate detection setup is required for that distinction.

Folia is not supported by this build. Confirm the updated plugin, your installed Animotions pack and your own Paper/client combination on a staging server before updating a public server.

Release checks

Personas 1.2.5 passed 157 automated tests and actual Paper 26.3 API linkage checks. Its packet NPC runtime started and stopped on Paper 26.3 build 157 BETA with Java 25 and PacketEvents 2.14.0. Connected-player interaction, skin preparation, animated playback and a live merged provider pack were not exercised in that check. The unchanged studio artwork bundle is labelled 1.2.4; the plugin version is 1.2.5.