Controlling an actor with no speed/velocity in a blend space?

Development Character & Animation
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I’m working on a project that takes Arduino input and uses it to control water using the Serial Communications plugin for UE5.
The water was modelled and animated in Blender, and the animation has 3 states for different water choppiness. I used a 1D blend space to transition smoothly between these animations, but now I’m realising exactly how blend spaces work, and that they’re usually controlled by the character movement component (taking the speed or velocity to change the animation). Of course, this water doesn’t have any velocity as it will stay in one position in the scene.

I need to take the input of the Arduino (this part is working fine) and use it to control the value of the blend space. So far, using blueprint communication by setting the variable in my controller blueprint to reference the animation blueprint and set the wave height did not work.

What is the best way to go about this? Is there another method to blend animations I’m unaware of? I am definitely a beginner in UE5, and also don’t know how these forums work. I can provide any extra information/screenshots if necessary.

Thank you in advance!

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If you have an input, and that input is already being updated at runtime (you can make it pront screen).

Then you can pass its value to an animation blueprint and that’s all you need.

There are a billion ways to pass the value ofc.

Easiest is to grab the mash, find the anim instance by draggin off it. Casting to the class, validating the result, and setting the variable in question.

If you dont have the input value being polled constantly / you can’t print it to the screen, then not really sure how you’d go about it.

Ps: blend shapes for water is innovative. I’d never go that route, but kudos.