Help in creating an animation system

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hey guys, what’s up?

I’m almost at my wit’s end here. Please, help me out. My friend and I need this animation system for our game, and here’s what we’re trying to do:

Hub Area (Third-Person View)

  • The main character can walk in any direction, but with the same animation (no 8-way).
  • There’s a jogging animation and all necessary blend animations.
  • Smooth transitions: idle → walk, walk → idle.
  • Smooth turns (90° and 180°) while walking or jogging.
  • Turns in place (90° and 180°).
  • Start/stop animations for both walking and jogging.
  • Basically, everything needed for smooth, polished animations (since fluid animations are one of the game’s key features).

Combat Areas (Same camera, but isometric view like in classic RPGs)

  • Default movement is jogging.
  • There’s a sprint (acceleration).
  • Hard stops.
  • Instant 180° turns.
  • All the same blending stuff I mentioned above for smoothness.
  • Combat animations—already done (tons of them).

The Big Question: How Do I Put It All Together?

I know how to make each part separately (I’ve done like 20 different projects). But all the tutorials I’ve found only cover basic systems—nothing that fits with more complex setups.

Please, if any of you pros are bored and feel like helping—explain how to connect all this. What’s the best approach?

  • Blendspaces?
  • State machines?
  • A mix of both?

My friend and I worked our butts off at our jobs to save up, quit, and go all-in on making at least a game demo. But as you can guess, time and money are running out. I really don’t wanna give up now.

I know some of you get what it’s like—working on your passion after a long day, barely having any energy left. Hoping for some help here. Thanks a ton!

2

Try checking Code Like Me, you might find something there i personally go to his channel every now and then to learn something about character movement.

Now i can’t help you much on character movement, but what i know works is that you can make one character with animation and all that and you can make copy of it in which one would have first person cam and the second with third person cam so whenever you switch areas or levels you can set it up in level blueprint or in game mode to possess that particular camera, like in your case when player goes to Hub Area (Third-Person View) have possess set to that player and when Combat Areas (Same camera, but isometric view like in classic RPGs) set possess to that one.

3

Hey! Thanks. Yeah, I know that channel—picked up a lot of useful stuff from there. I’ll dig through it some more.

About the character copy idea—yep, I’ve actually thought about that too. We’re planning a skin system for the main hero, so when you switch skins, it’ll need to update both copies. But I don’t think that’ll be too hard to pull off.

But I still hope that someone will help me.