Rowing Animation

By
Seamlessmods

Natural first- and third-person boat rowing, with hands following the paddles, bent elbows and smooth body movement.

About

Seamless Rowing makes boat travel feel alive. Your hands follow the paddles while your elbows bend, shoulders move and body leans naturally into each stroke. Just get in a boat and row.

Third person — from behind

Third-person rowing with shoulder and torso movement

Third person — from the front

Bent elbows, body movement and smooth recovery

First person

First-person rowing with hands following the paddle handles

Features

Animated first- and third-person rowing, including turns, starts and smooth stops.
Hands follow the actual paddle handles. All vanilla boats, chest boats and bamboo rafts are supported.
Preserves your custom skin, classic or slim arms, sleeves and supported vanilla armor, trims and enchantment glint.
Attacking and using items take priority. Held items are visually stowed while rowing; your inventory stays unchanged.
Uses Minecraft's paddle sounds and your resource-pack replacements.

Settings

Toggle first person, third person, bent elbows and torso movement separately. Open settings through Mod Menu on Fabric, or the Mods menu on Forge and NeoForge. You can also bind the settings shortcut in Controls.

Installation & multiplayer

Client-only: install the matching file on your own client. The server does not need this mod. Each player who wants to see the improved rowing needs it on their client.

Fabric requires Fabric API. Forge and NeoForge need no additional required library. SeamlessLib and animation frameworks are not required. Modpacks may include unmodified official releases.

1.20.1: Fabric / Forge — Java 17
1.21.1: Fabric / Forge / NeoForge — Java 21
26.2 and 26.3: Fabric / Forge / NeoForge — Java 25

Compatibility

Tested with matching builds of Sodium/Embeddium, Iris/Oculus, Not Enough Animations, First-person Model, Punchy, Hold My Items, Eating Animation and Fresh Player Extension 1.1 with EMF/ETF, wherever matching loader builds are available.

First-person Model temporarily hides its body overlay while Rowing controls the arms and restores it afterward. 3D Skin Layers keeps its first-person rendering and uses simpler third-person arms. Unsupported custom player models and unverified modded boats retain their existing animation. Moving backwards only also retains vanilla behavior.

AI disclaimer: This mod was made with the help of AI.