Hi everyone,
I’m learning animation workflows in Unreal Engine 5 and I’m having trouble blending smoothly between idle and walking animations using an Animation Blueprint.
I’ve created a simple Blend Space with Idle and Walk animations and connected it in the AnimGraph, but the transition feels unnatural – sometimes it snaps or doesn’t play correctly when the character starts or stops moving.
My questions are:
What’s the best way to control the blend between idle and walk based on character speed?
Do I need to set any specific values for interpolation or blend time to get smoother transitions?
Are there any common mistakes in Blend Space setup that could cause this issue?
I’d really appreciate a step-by-step explanation or tips from someone who has set this up before. Thanks a lot!
You can change the curve from linear to something else and see if it fits your specific transition better. It’s gonna be under the Asset Details window in your Blend Space.
There’s one more thing tho, I’ll cover it in the next question.
While blending animations, you need to make sure that their start & end poses match to some degree. For example, if the character’s left foot is in the front in its idle animation, while the right foot is in the front at the start / end of its running animation, there’ll at least be a slight stutter in the transition, or worse. It’d be very clearly noticeable if we tried to blend two different movement animations with the same issue, like walking & running.
Now, what should we do about that?
First of all, it’s simply impossible to have an acceptable transition between two animations with that issue I described. You must change one of the animations to start / end (or both start and end if there’s a two way transition) with the same foot with the other.
But then, how are we supposed to transition in a moment when the character’s feet are in the wrong place in the current animation? There are two ways. (They can also be implemented at the same time btw, but that’d only be needed if there’s a lack of animations. Usually you go with one.)
Have two versions of every animation. If you’re using motion matching or manually keeping track of the last stepped foot, you can easily transition to the correct version of the next animation. This isn’t related to Blend Spaces tho.
Use Sync Groups! They’re amazing! You just place sync markers on keyframes where right & left foot are stepped respectively (two different sync markers), and type in the group name on animations / blend spaces you want. This is also not related to blend spaces but like, your blend spaces can also be affected by the sync group if you set it so. However, keep in mind that right & left foot must both given enough time in the animations. It won’t work if the animation just starts with right foot and then goes straight to jumping, for example. Instead it should be left, right, and then jump.
