Hey everyone,
I’m working on a character animation system in Unreal Engine 5, and I’ve set up 8-directional movement using a 2D BlendSpace (forward, back, left, right + diagonals). It’s working fine for blending idle → movement based on input.
Now I want to add Run Start and Run Stop animations — so when the player starts moving in any direction, the corresponding start animation plays before blending into movement, and when the player stops, a stop animation plays before returning to idle.
How should I approach this inside an Animation Blueprint and State Machine?
Should I handle this outside the BlendSpace using separate states for “Start” and “Stop”?
Is there a clean way to do this without duplicating everything for each direction?
Would love any tips, best practices, or examples. Thanks in advance!