Working with Blend Space 1D, Key Bindings, and State Machines

In the previous chapter, we had a high-level look at animation and developing the game design for our SuperSideScroller project. You were provided with just the beginning steps in terms of developing the project itself. Then, you prepared the player character’s Animation Blueprint and character Blueprint, and also imported all of the required skeletal and animation assets.

In this chapter, we will set up the walking and jumping animations of our player character so that the movement has a sense of locomotion. To accomplish this, you will be introduced to Blend Spaces, Animation Blueprints, and Animation State Machines, the three pillars behind how character animations are controlled.

At this point, the character can move around the level, but is stuck in the T-Pose and does not animate at all. This can be fixed by creating a new Blend Space for the player character, which will be done in the very first exercise...