I expect some questions since this tool accomplishes almost the same tasks as Animated Props

The videos I've made should highlight the main features of this addon and how it works. If you're not able to view the video, then I can summarize it in a few bullet points:

• This tool poses a ragdoll or prop to its built-in animation sequences, to any frame (see the icon, where I drag on the timeline to animate the Soldier's running sequence)
  
• This tool also poses a ragdoll or prop to a Stop Motion Helper animation to any frame.
  
• The tool strictly poses the ragdoll or prop and does not do any conversions, like Animated Props "Convert to Animated Prop" option.

Furthermore, the following posts highlight some of the other features of this tool.

• SP-Only Gestures
  
• Puppeteer Offsetting
  
• Feature Requests 1
  
• Feature Requests 2
  
• Retargeting

This tool is named Ragdoll Puppeteer. It is found under the Posing category.

I've developed and tested this tool in singleplayer. You can use this in multiplayer, but expect some bugs and server performance issues with this, as this sends out a lot of data to the server to perform physics calculations. I recommend using this in a sandbox LAN or a peer-to-peer server, where the server demand tends to be low.

Animated Props converts a ragdoll or prop into an entity that plays its animations continously. This tool simply sets a frame of animation to the ragdoll or prop, and also supports Stop Motion Helper animations. No conversions. This tool also supports playback, but not in the same form as Animated Props.

It's up to you to decide whether this tool would be useful for you or not. I'd see this as an alternative to Animated Props. One advantage I see with this tool is that this allows you to quickly modify the same ragdoll's or prop's pose and use other tools such as Ragdoll Mover or Stop Motion Helper to change the resultant pose or enable different animation workflows, while Animated Props converts the ragdoll or prop to a completely different entity which lacks the flexibility for modification through the tools mentioned. It's also lighter weight (~289 kb as of May 31st, 2025). One disadvantage is that it lacks complex sequence layering features, and it is "greener" than the battletested Animated Props. The choice is yours.

Nope. I had an idea about this at one point of making an animation version of the Stand Poser tool, and I made a prototype of it, before I opened the workshop and saw the new Animated Props. I admit that I did view the Animated Props source code for some inspiration and implementation notes for nonphysical bones, but the implementation, other than a few vendor functions from Ragdoll Mover and Stop Motion Helper, is my own. I do hope that this tool can inspire a new feature in Animated Props, as that tool has seen more use by the GMod community.

I assume you probably watched the videos and still did not understand it in some way. I tried to make the tool as intuitive as possible to use. Try to play around with the tool and observe all its features. Hover over the UI and read the tooltips for more details.

Bind a key to +ragdollpuppeteer_playback. For example, bind b +ragdollpuppeteer_playback. When you hold the key (b, for example), the animation will play, and the ragdoll or prop will pose itself automatically. For a list of special keys to bind (such as Numpad or function keys), see here

Usually, this happens because the ragdoll doesn't have enough physics colliders to approximate the pose. To fix this, there are two methods:

• Find a physics addon that adds more physics colliders to the bones. For TF2, I recommend Another TF2 Physics Override. I'd use this approach if I want less setup (as opposed to the next point).
  
• Use the Ragdoll Stretch and Ragdoll Weight tools. I'd try this approach if I cannot find an addon that overrides the physics colliders.

Usually, this happens if the ragdoll's physics model on the server doesn't match the clients, which results in a distorted mess. Try to use the physics model provided by the server.

If you have the control panel in view (by holding C), performance drops due to the need to update the sliders, and that causes choppy playback. Make sure to have that disabled.

If you plan to bake this animation in Stop Motion Helper using the physics recorder, you can increase the Record Interval to allow the interpolation between frames to smoothen the result, at the cost of a slightly inaccurate result.

If the puppet's movement to the puppeteer is choppy, there are a number of factors. The tickrate can influence how fast the puppet reaches the puppeteer. Using a different physics engine for GMod such as Volt can also cause changes to how the puppet moves to the puppeteer, which causes choppy movement. You should experiment with your GMod environment before reporting a bug or making a discussion about your problem. (For tickrate, put -tickrate X into the launch options, where X is a value between 0 and 66).

If the above solutions above are unable to fix the issue for you, you might have more success with the Animated Props tool. Nonetheless, feel free to make a discussion post so I can try to solve your problem.

If this is a small bug, you can report it in the forum here. If this is a severe bug, report it in the issue tracker[github.com]. Try to visualize the problem with screenshots or describe it in words, and give me a list of steps to reproduce the bug.

You are allowed to post a thread about it in discussions. Of course, you can post it in comments, but it will be inconvenient to have to scroll through other comments to find the one that has the problem.