Adding rotation animation for mech

making a top-down mech game. The mech is aiming at the mouse but i want to play a rotation animation (taking side steps as it rotates. I have a mock-up animation and the mech is rotating but i cannot figure out how to play it when the mech is rotating and how to tell which direction the mech is turning and at what speed.

If I am understanding correctly, I believe you can solve this with an animation blendspace. You’ll want 2-4 animations for this. Turning left, turning right, and possibly a faster version of each. Your character blueprint will update a rotation speed value in the AnimBP, and that value is fed into the blendspace. If you also want to include walking forwards and backwards, you can make a 2D Blendspace instead. Check out the default character animation blueprint in Unreal’s example projects to see their blendshape hookups.