This Minecraft resource pack bring mobs to life by adding new animations

Minecraft is famous for its large and beautifully generated terrain. However, for as incredible as worlds can be when using one of Minecraft's best seeds, the very way that mobs move can be immersion-breaking due to how still and lifeless it can feel. That may work for skeletons, but not when the living villager feels just as dead as the zombie villager.

That's where the Fresh Animations resource pack comes in. Created by Fresh__LX, this is undeniably one of Minecraft's best resource packs and improves the immersion of the game by a huge amount.

Detailed below is how exactly Fresh Animations does this, along with how to install and use it for yourself.

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Minecraft's Fresh Animations resource pack

Fresh Animations aims to completely overhaul the vanilla game's animations to make the world feel more real and immersive.

Some of the more noticeable or impressive changes are Minecraft's trade-happy villagers and dangerous illagers with more realistic running and walking animations. Another major change is that every pack has much more realistic turning, physically shifting as they change direction.

While the pack has come a long way, Fresh__LX has a progress bar on the pack's homepage that states it is only 85% done.

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How to use it

1) Open CurseForge

The CurseForge home page, where new profiles can be created (Image via CurseForge)

The first thing you'll want to do to test out the Fresh Animations pack is open up CurseForge. While some consider Modrinth to be better for mods, CurseForge's simplicity and selection are hard to beat. The pack could be installed manually, but CurseForge helps to reduce the potential for error by automating the installation process of both the pack itself and the modloader needed to use it.

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2) Make a new profile or open a preexisting one

The Fresh Animations example profile (Image via CurseForge)

Now that you are in CurseForge, use the "Create Custom Profile" button in the top right of the screen to make a modded profile. The name can be anything that will help you remember the mods you installed. This example used the name "Fresh Animations." Next, change the game version to 1.20.1 for reasons explained in a moment. Leave the modloader set to Forge and hit the "Create" button.

Now, while Fresh Animations says it works on versions of the game up until 1.20.4, because of its dependency on Optifine it actually only functions on versions up to 1.20.1. This is due to the fact that Optifine has not had a full release since 1.20.1.

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3) Install Fresh Animations

Fresh Animations should be at or near the top of the list (Image via CurseForge)

Now that the profile has been created, use the puzzle piece-shaped button underneath the orange "Play" button to implement additional content. This is where you can add in any of Minecraft's best mods or modpacks if you want to use them as well. Use the drop-down menu below the search bar to switch from mods to resource packs.

Fresh Animations should be at the top of the list due to its popularity, but if it isn't, simply search for it using the search bar at the top of the screen. Hit the orange "Install" button to add the pack to the profile.

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4) Install Optifine

Don't forget to install Optifine, as it is required (Image via Optifine)

Fresh animations require Optifine to work. This means you will need to navigate to the Optifine website and download the mod for the version of the game you are playing. This example downloaded Optifine for Minecraft version 1.20.1. Once the mod is downloaded, drop it into the mods folder of the custom profile you set up earlier.

If the mods folder does not exist, go ahead and make it or launch the game once. This will cause it to be made automatically.

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5) Test the pack

Mobs look very different using Fresh Animations (Image via Mojang Studios)

Once it has been installed, use the back button to return to the profile's homepage. Then, click the orange "Play" button to open the modded launcher. Open the game and create a new world as normal. Once in the game, pause and navigate into the options section. Hit the "Resource Packs" button and move Fresh Animations from available to selected. This will turn the pack on.

Due to how different the animations are, it should be pretty easy to tell if the pack is working simply by seeing a mob. So, mobs like pigs and cows, often used in great early-game Minecraft farms, have much more fluid and natural movements unmistakeably different from their vanilla counterparts.