Immersive Animals

Immersive Animals makes the animals you already know feel alive. No new mobs, no new items to grind — cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, horses, wolves, cats and the rest of the vanilla farm and wildlife get genders, hunger, a daily rhythm, natural breeding and dozens of small behaviours.

Everything works with vanilla animals in existing worlds, and almost every system can be switched off in the config.

A rework of More Mob Variants by nyuppo. Immersive Animals started as a reimagining of that mod for NeoForge 1.21.1: its idea of natural coat variants for vanilla mobs lives on here, reworked and extended with genders, hunger, sleep, breeding and behaviour. Thanks to nyuppo for the original mod (released under CC0).

Males and females

• Every animal is male or female. Only a male and a female can breed.
• Males are a bit bigger and look different: bulls have horns, rams have big curled horns, boars have tusks, roosters have a comb and a tail, stallions have a thicker mane, tomcats a wider head.
• Rivalry: males sometimes fight each other when females are around. Fights are never lethal; the loser runs away.
• Protective males: a bull, ram, boar or stallion attacks a player who hurts a female of its herd.
• Only cows that recently gave birth give milk (optional).

Hunger and food

• Animals get hungry over time and look for food by themselves. Hunger never kills; it only affects breeding and size.
• Grazers (cows, sheep, horses) eat short grass; chickens peck the ground; pigs root around; animals may raid ripe crops (respects mobGriefing).
• Hay feeders: sheep, cows and horses eat a hay block bit by bit — 9 meals per block. A partly eaten block drops the wheat that is left.
• Food in the mouth: throw food on the ground and animals pick it up, carry it in their mouth and eat it when hungry. Predators (wolves, cats, ocelots, polar bears) pick up loot and meat from their kills.
• Mothers feed their babies: a well-fed mother brings food to her hungry young.
• Hand feeding works without a partner nearby; every food restores the same amount, thrown or hand-fed.

Natural breeding

• Well-fed adult males and females breed on their own, with a cooldown and a population limit per area, so farms do not explode.
• Babies follow their mother, sleep next to her and get fed by her.

Sleep

• Day animals sleep at night; wolves, cats and ocelots sleep during the day. Animals also lie down to rest from time to time.
• Three sleeping poses for four-legged animals (on the side, stretched out, curled up), the pose changes from day to day. Chickens sleep sitting or puffed up, rabbits press to the ground.
• Closed eyes and floating "Z" particles while sleeping.
• Sleeping animals only wake up when hit, at morning, or when they end up in water. Before sleeping they look for a flat dry spot — not on a cliff edge and not in a puddle.
• Chickens go to a perch, goats climb high ground, rabbits return to their burrow, babies cuddle up to their mother.
• Sleeping cats purr, dogs snore softly, other animals are quiet.
• The sleep state is saved: reload at night and the herd is still lying down.

Feed them up

• Keep feeding an animal that is already full and it grows: bigger model and more health, up to size 2.0.
• Bigger animals give more drops — smoothly from ×1 at size 1.0 to ×6 at size 2.0 — and fattened sheep give more wool.
• An animal that stays hungry (satiety below 30) slowly loses size again.
• A fully fattened tamed wolf or cat can be ridden by its owner, no saddle needed. Dogs are fast but can't jump; cats are slower but jump high.

Coat variants

New natural coats for cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, cats and wolves — albino, ashen, cream, pinto, sunset cows; spotted and piebald pigs; inky and patched sheep; midnight and duck-like chickens, and more. Babies inherit their parents' coats.

Smarter behaviour

• Hungry wild wolves hunt livestock as a pack; full wolves leave sheep alone.
• Animals look for shelter from the rain under trees and roofs.
• Herd animals stay together; pigs wallow in mud; goats climb; foxes keep food caches; rabbits dig burrows; cats bring gifts, ambush and scratch; polar bears fish; camels look for water; baby turtles rush to the sea and hide in their shell from predators.

Jade support

With Jade installed, looking at an animal shows its gender, coat, satiety, breeding status, size, whether it is sleeping or carrying food.

Requirements

Install the mod (and GeckoLib) on both the client and the server.

Compatibility

• Fresh Animations (with Entity Model Features and Entity Texture Features): supported.
  • Cows, pigs, sheep and chickens use Immersive Animals' own animated models, so they keep the mod's look and animations.
  • Other animals use the Fresh Animations models: sleeping animals lie down and close their eyes on the Fresh Animations model, cats and wolves use the pack's own sleeping animation, males get a wider head (cats), bigger horns (mooshrooms) or a thicker mane (horses), and food is shown in the mouth.
• No Man's Land and Mixed Litter: supported.
  • The remodeled pigs, cows, mooshrooms, sheep, chickens and rabbits from Mixed Litter (bundled with No Man's Land) are kept, together with their coat variants.
  • Immersive Animals' male parts (horns, tusks, comb, tail) are not drawn on these models — males are only a bit bigger.
  • Sleeping animals lie down in poses made for the remodels (three poses for four-legged animals, sitting or puffed-up chickens, rabbits pressed to the ground) and close their eyes on the remodel textures.
  • Works with each remodel toggle in the Mixed Litter config.
• Jade: built-in plugin.
• Other model-replacing mods for cows, pigs, sheep or chickens (besides those above) will conflict, because Immersive Animals replaces those renderers.
• Resource packs: textures with the vanilla layout work for all animals. For cows, pigs, sheep and chickens the vanilla texture is used when a pack changes their texture (their models need the vanilla layout).

Configuration

Everything is configurable in config/immersiveanimals-common.toml: genders and male chance, male size, natural breeding (cooldown, population limit), hunger, crop eating, rivalry, sleep and rest chance, and toggles for every optional feature — food carrying, mother feeding, hay feeders, fattening, starvation shrink, rideable pets, wolf hunting, rain shelter, sleep poses, closed eyes and "Z" particles.

FAQ

Does it work in existing worlds? Yes. Existing animals get a gender and a coat the first time they load.

Can I use it in a modpack? Yes, feel free.

I found a bug / have an idea. Please open an issue or leave a comment — screenshots help a lot.