Even with smoothing on, the animations look quite choppy and low framerate. Is this just something that cannot be fixed due to the way the animations are implemented (keyframe vs. the formula based animations in vanilla)?

Even with smoothing on, the animations look quite choppy and low framerate. Is this just something that cannot be fixed due to the way the animations are implemented (keyframe vs. the formula based animations in vanilla)?

Its Bad Optimizations

I just tried out NotEnoughAnimations and BadOptimizations alone on Neo 1.21.7 and the animations look the exact same.

Sounds like you have an incompatible mod installed, limiting it to the 20 ticks updates. All animations are formula-based like vanilla, none use keyframes.