UE 5.7.4 – Character Moves Sideways and Cannot Run Forward Despite Playing Running Animation

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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I’m developing a single-player game using Unreal Engine 5.7.4, and I’m experiencing a strange character movement issue that I haven’t been able to resolve.

I would really appreciate some help from experienced Unreal Engine developers.

Problem Description

I have a Character Blueprint called BP_Sabotajci_Aleksandr1.

The character previously worked correctly and was able to run toward target locations. In fact, I successfully tested a cinematic sequence where eight characters ran toward an administrative building without any movement problems.

However, the character has recently started behaving strangely.

When the running animation plays:

  • The character continuously drifts toward its own left side.

  • It looks as though an invisible force is pushing the character sideways.

  • At the same time, the character appears to encounter resistance when trying to move forward.

  • The running animation plays, but the character cannot move normally toward its destination.

It almost looks as though the character is trying to run against a strong invisible wind.

Troubleshooting Already Performed

1. AI MoveTo

I originally used AI MoveTo to move the character toward a Target Point.

Result: The character continued drifting sideways.

2. Add Movement Input

I created a separate test using:

Event Tick → Add Movement Input

With:

  • World Direction: Get Actor Forward Vector

  • Scale Value: 1.0

  • Force: False

Result: The same sideways drifting occurred.

3. Animation Blueprint

I temporarily disabled the Animation Blueprint.

With no animation playing and movement input enabled, the character moved forward without the sideways drifting.

4. Root Motion

I changed the Animation Blueprint’s Root Motion Mode from Root Motion from Montages Only to No Root Motion Extraction.

Result: The problem remained.

The running Animation Sequence (Rifle_Run) also has Enable Root Motion disabled.

5. Skeletal Mesh Collision

I temporarily changed the Skeletal Mesh Collision Preset to NoCollision.

Result: No improvement.

6. Playing the Animation Directly

I changed Animation Mode to Use Animation Asset and selected the running animation directly, bypassing the Animation Blueprint.

Result: The sideways drifting still occurred.

Important Observation

The same character and running setup previously worked correctly in the project.

The issue appears when the running animation is active, even without the Animation Blueprint.

This makes me suspect an issue related to the animation’s root bone, skeleton orientation, mesh transform, or an unexpected interaction with Character Movement.

However, I haven’t identified the actual cause.

Questions

  1. Could an Animation Sequence cause sideways mesh movement even when Enable Root Motion is disabled?

  2. Could a mismatch between the Skeletal Mesh orientation and Character Capsule cause this behavior?

  3. What is the best way to determine whether the Capsule itself is moving sideways or only the Skeletal Mesh?

  4. Are there any debugging tools or specific settings I should inspect to identify unexpected movement or transform updates?

I’m happy to provide Blueprint screenshots, animation settings, and a video demonstrating the issue.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and help!

2

To answer questions at end of post,

1: If root motion is disabled, but the anim itself has root motion in it the mesh could appear to drift and snap back to origin as it loops.

2: If skele mesh relative rot doesn’t match capsule, root motion could fight with the character movement component, and with rm off, the anims could appear to just be running in the wrong direction.

3: Best way to tell if it’s a skele/capsule mismatch is to just look at forward arrow in character bp. If your char has the default character as the parent class, there should be a blue arrow in bp editor virewport pointing forward. Make sure the Mesh component is facing same direction in bp viewport. Most skelemeshes are rotated to relative -90 yaw/z in the details tab. Since the basic arrow is defined in cpp and marked readonly, it can’t be made visible in game, but you could right click arrow in the components panel (top left window in bp editor by default) and click duplicate to make on which can be changed to not be Hidden in Game.

4: First thing I’d do to debug, is comparethe rotation of Mesh to basic Arrow, as above. Next, I’d suggest changing Animation mode on Mesh to Custom or Use Animation Asset (with none selected) to see if the pawn will move about in T-pose properly without anims affecting it.

If pawn still won’t move, there could be some oddball settings in the character movement comp messing things up. If that’s the case, go thru details on the character movement component, and look for any options that have the little “reset this property to its default value” arrow on the right and try resetting them to see if it fixes. Just be sure to make a duplicate of bp first as a backup in case you have a bunch of speed values or whatever setup already.