Suit yourself but as someone who has gone fully into Chickynoid, it’s really not that complicated, and adding the animation stuff you’re talking about is not complicated either. But yeah the lack of documentation is the main issue I had when learning to use Chickynoid.
Anyways, you seem pretty set on not using it, but one bit of advice I would have if you do use it would be do stuff the “Chickynoid” way and everything is easy. I’ve moved my game to Chickynoid and now the entire game is only a couple of client/server mods.