FiveM Animation List

How animations work in FiveM

A FiveM animation is two strings: an animation dictionary (the anim dict) and a clip name (also called the anim name). The dictionary, for example amb@world_human_smoking@male@male_a@base, is a container that GTA V streams in on demand; the clip, like base, is the specific movement inside it. To play one you request the dictionary with RequestAnimDict(dict), wait until HasAnimDictLoaded(dict) returns true, then call TaskPlayAnim with both values. Miss the request step and nothing plays, which is the single most common animation bug in FiveM.

TaskPlayAnim takes the ped, the dict, the clip, a blend-in and blend-out speed, a duration, a flag, a playback rate and three lock booleans. The flag is a bitfield: 1 loops the clip, and you combine bits for upper-body-only or hold-last-frame behaviour, easiest to work out with Vespura's animation flags calculator. A duration of -1 plays until you stop it, and ClearPedTasks(PlayerPedId()) ends any animation. Because dictionaries and clips ship with the base game, the same pair works on ESX, QBCore, Qbox and standalone; only the code around it changes.

FiveM animation list: anim dict and clip pairs

The table below is a curated set of 64 animation dict and clip pairs, grouped by what they are used for on a roleplay server: idles and leaning, sitting, hands-up and restrained reactions, gestures, job loops, leisure animations, phone poses, paired social animations, dances and eating. Every row was checked against the DurtyFree GTA data dumps, the dictionary exists and the clip is listed inside it, so each pair is ready to drop into TaskPlayAnim. Names are case sensitive, copy them exactly.

Two families cover most of what servers use. The amb@world_human_* dictionaries are the ambient world animations the game plays on NPCs: smoking, drinking coffee, leaning, clipboards, welding, yoga. The mp_player_* and anim@mp_player_int* dictionaries hold the GTA Online player interactions and celebrations: waves, thumbs up, salutes, peace signs, slow claps. Learn those two prefixes and you can guess your way to a lot of animations before you even open a browser.

Scenarios vs animations

Alongside TaskPlayAnim there is a second way to make a ped do something: scenarios. A scenario is a named, prebuilt behaviour like WORLD_HUMAN_SMOKING or WORLD_HUMAN_CLIPBOARD started with TaskStartScenarioInPlace(ped, name, 0, true). You do not request a dictionary and you do not pass a clip, the game handles the enter, loop and exit for you. The trade-off is control: scenarios are quick and reliable but you cannot blend or set flags the way TaskPlayAnim allows. The base game ships 247 scenarios; the smoking, coffee and clipboard behaviours in the table above also exist as scenarios, which is why some emote menus use one or the other for the same visible action. Stop a scenario the same way you stop an animation, with ClearPedTasks.

Lua snippets: play an animation, a config, a scenario

The core recipe is request, wait, play. This snippet loops the smoking base animation on the local player and frees the dictionary once the clip is running, which is safe because the animation keeps playing after RemoveAnimDict.

-- client.lua | play a looping animation on the local player
local dict = "amb@world_human_smoking@male@male_a@base"
local clip = "base"

CreateThread(function()
    RequestAnimDict(dict)
    while not HasAnimDictLoaded(dict) do
        Wait(0)                -- wait until the dictionary is streamed in
    end

    TaskPlayAnim(PlayerPedId(), dict, clip,
        8.0, -8.0, -1,         -- blend in, blend out, duration (-1 = until stopped)
        1,                     -- flag 1 = loop (see the flags calculator for combos)
        0.0, false, false, false)

    RemoveAnimDict(dict)       -- free memory, the clip keeps playing
end)

-- stop it later with:
-- ClearPedTasks(PlayerPedId())

In a real resource you keep animations in a config table and register a command or keybind per entry, so server owners can add pairs from the list above without touching the logic. If you would rather not build this at all, a FiveM emote script gives players a searchable menu over this exact kind of table.

-- client.lua | drive animations from a config table + commands
local Anims = {
    wave  = { dict = "friends@frj@ig_1",                 clip = "wave_a" },
    clap  = { dict = "amb@world_human_cheering@male_a",  clip = "base" },
    lean  = { dict = "amb@world_human_leaning@male@wall@back@hands_together@base", clip = "base" },
}

local function playAnim(name)
    local a = Anims[name]
    if not a then return end
    RequestAnimDict(a.dict)
    while not HasAnimDictLoaded(a.dict) do Wait(0) end
    TaskPlayAnim(PlayerPedId(), a.dict, a.clip, 8.0, -8.0, -1, 1, 0.0, false, false, false)
end

for name in pairs(Anims) do
    RegisterCommand(name, function() playAnim(name) end, false)
end

Scenarios are a one-liner when you do not need blend or flags, useful for NPC props and quick ambient poses.

-- client.lua | scenarios: one line, no RequestAnimDict needed
TaskStartScenarioInPlace(PlayerPedId(), "WORLD_HUMAN_SMOKING", 0, true)

-- other verified scenario names:
--   WORLD_HUMAN_AA_COFFEE, WORLD_HUMAN_CLIPBOARD,
--   WORLD_HUMAN_COP_IDLES, WORLD_HUMAN_MUSCLE_FLEX, WORLD_HUMAN_LEANING

-- stop the scenario:
ClearPedTasks(PlayerPedId())

Finding more animation dictionaries

This page curates the pairs servers reach for most, but the game holds far more: the DurtyFree gta-v-data-dumps put the count at 20,179 dictionaries. When you need one that is not listed here, three references cover everything. alexguirre's GTA V Animations List lets you preview clips, Pleb Masters Forge has a searchable data browser, and the DurtyFree data dumps ship animDictsCompact.json, a machine-readable file with every dictionary and its clips, which is what verified this table.

Whichever source you use, the workflow is the same: copy the dictionary and clip exactly (they are case sensitive), test in-game, and if the ped just stands there check that you requested the dictionary and that your server build is new enough. DLC animations from casino, tuners, drug wars and later packs only exist on higher builds, set with sv_enforceGameBuild in your server.cfg. See the TaskPlayAnim native reference for the full parameter list.

Scripts that use these animations

If you would rather give players the animations than script each one, several Var FiveM resources are built on this same dict-and-clip foundation. Var-Emote is the direct fit: an advanced NUI emote menu with 381 emotes, 222 dances, 273 prop emotes, 114 walk styles and 42 shared dual emotes, plus an 8-slot wheel, Numpad binds and a 3D placement mode, so players trigger any of these animations without touching Lua. Var-Creator uses ped mood and expression animations in its take-a-picture mode with 30+ presets, and a FiveM barbershop script seats the ped in the chair with synced scissors animations while editing. All of them run on ESX and QBCore and ship in Escrow, Partially Open and Open Source variants.

Related: FiveM emote list · FiveM ped list · FiveM blips list