Method selector

Problem	Primary mechanism	Why	Common misuse
Idle/walk/run over speed	Blend Space 1D	One continuous axis	Separate state per speed
Strafing over speed and direction	Blend Space 2D	Two continuous axes	Unsynced directional clips
Aim/look over yaw and pitch	Aim Offset	Mesh-space additive directional pose	Ordinary non-additive Blend Space
Grounded/falling/swimming/climbing modes	State Machine	Persistent discrete states and transitions	Boolean blend web in main AnimGraph
Weapon equipped/unequipped	Blend Poses by Bool/Enum or linked layer	Small discrete variant	Duplicating the entire locomotion machine
Run while firing/reloading	Montage Slot + Layered Blend per Bone	Event action over lower-body base	Full-body montage when legs must continue
Recoil/breathing/lean	Additive pose	Relative delta over base pose	Treating additive clip as full pose
Walk/run cycles drift out of foot phase	Sync Group + Sync Markers	Aligns named gait events	Longer blend duration
Abrupt short transition between similar moving poses	Inertialization	Carries outgoing motion without continued source evaluation	Using it between radically different poses
One-off attack/combo with sections	Montage	Controlled sequence, sections, notifies, slots	Large state-machine branch
Different bones need different transition rates	Blend Profile	Per-bone transition weighting	Multiple arbitrary transition nodes
Complex reusable body-mode graph	Linked Anim Layer / Linked Anim Graph	Modular graph ownership	Copy-pasted graphs

Decision tests

Blend Space

Use when the desired pose is a smooth function of one or two measured values. Inputs must have meaningful units and ranges. Samples should represent comparable motion and compatible phase.

State Machine

Use when the animation mode persists and entry/exit rules matter. Keep gameplay truth outside the state machine; let transitions consume stable variables.

Montage

Use when gameplay explicitly starts/stops/branches an authored action. Use Sections for combos or loops and Slots for body-region application. Same-Slot sequences override one another.

Layered Blend per Bone

Use for regional full-pose overrides. Select Branch Filter or Blend Mask deliberately. Define the first affected bone and verify all descendants. Use mesh-space rotation blend when local-space composition produces shoulder/spine artifacts, then recheck cost and visual result.

Additive

Use when the clip represents a delta from a known reference pose. Confirm local-space or mesh-space additive setup and reference pose before blaming the graph.

Inertialization

Use for short transitions where preserving outgoing velocity matters more than continuing to evaluate the source clip. Keep standard crossfade when source Notifies or exact source phase must remain active through the transition.