Custom cow model issue

[modest merlin]

I have this custom cow model that has been broken for some time, and I can't figure out why/how.

No matter what I do, the tail and udder cubes want to orient themselves in these odd positions on the cow. They also refuse to animate. I do happen to use custom animations, but they animate well in Blockbench. Is this an issue with the model or is it perhaps an animation issue?

Edit: hard to tell in my screenshot, but, in-game, the udders are just barely protruding from the neck/chest of the cow, and the tail is hovering beneath the cow in this odd orientation.

[solid dove]

Have you tried fixing the pivot points I know sometimes this happens to me on my models

[modest merlin]

i've used the pivot point on the tail for the purposes of animation, but it looks normal to me. attached are the details of the body cube, which is the container for the tail and udder groups, respectively.

[modest merlin]

Update: it does appear to be related to rotation, or rather just the tail and udder groups’ orientation in relation to the “body” cube. If you look at the first screenshot in my previous message, the “body” is rotated by -90, while the “udder” is rotated by 0 and the “tail” is rotated by 85.

Maybe the issue is that the tail and udder groups simply don’t need to be rotated because they’re already going to come out to -90° in game (or need to be calibrated with that pre-rotation in mind)? But the confusing part of that is—why does it look good in blockbench but not in game?

To test this theory, I subtracted 90 from both weird subgroups’ rowtion values (the pivot points will need to be adjusted for this to actually FIX the issue, but this was just a test), and their orientations were better in game

At least they were pointing the right direction

To fix this, maybe I can un-rotate the “body” cube and position the tail and udder where they would be with it in a non-rotated state, then re-rotate the body cube. Seems like a really weird thing to need to do considering the groups are all part of the same family and I guess my expectation would be that they’d rotate as a family, too, and blockbench wouldn’t lie to me visually about that before the model hits the game, but who am I? I’m just an end user…

Alternatively I could design the “body” cube to not need rotation and switch around the texture, but then I’d have to refactor all the animations too

Ay ay ay

I just wanted to add some dumb little cute details to my cow, you guys

[languid plaza]

The Vanilla cow model (as well as the sheep and pig) are old models from the beginning of the development of Minecraft, and for optimization's sake they tried to have the smallest texture possible.

Back then you could not rotate cuboids, only groups, so they modeled the "body" part of these mobs upright so they would take up less space on the UV, allowing for a smaller texture. They then rotated the "body" group in an animation to make it look right. You can check the Vanilla models if you download the Vanilla assets at https://bedrock.dev/packs, those models will open in the Legacy Bedrock format.

You, were working from a newer model format with the body in the right rotation in the bind pose, so you could not see the problem

So, to fix your issue, you should customize the cow's client entity file, to not apply the "setup" animation. It's the one responsible for rotating the body.

You could erase the line under "animate", or just comment it, whichever works

[modest merlin]

That makes a lot of sense. I’ve seen the vanilla model before. Didn’t realize the reason for the odd positioning.

I’ve actually opted to just pull the tail and udder groups out of the body group and animate them independently without rotation. If that doesn’t work, I’ll roll back and try your suggestion. Thanks, @languid plaza !

[languid plaza]

!close