Movement and animation seam

Ownership

• CMC/capsule owns authoritative collision, position, velocity, acceleration, movement mode, and floor state for code-driven locomotion.
• Animation Blueprint reads those values and presents them.
• Montage root motion may temporarily drive movement when deliberately enabled.
• Mesh offsets, leaning, stride warping, and smoothing are presentation; do not move the authoritative capsule through arbitrary Anim Blueprint logic.

In-place locomotion

1. Derive speed from CMC velocity, using horizontal or local-space components as the graph requires.
2. Derive direction from velocity relative to character/control rotation.
3. Read falling, acceleration, crouch, and movement mode from the Character/CMC.
4. Match animation play rate/stride warping to approved physical speed.
5. Keep gait thresholds derived from movement states/data, not duplicated magic values.

Root motion

• Animation asset must contain root-bone motion and have root motion enabled.
• Animation Blueprint root-motion mode controls extraction/application.
• Epic warns that extracting root motion from everything moves Animation Graph work to the Game Thread; prefer the narrowest mode that satisfies the project, especially in networked gameplay.
• While Walking/Falling, Character physics still constrains vertical root motion; Flying applies full root motion.
• Root motion takes precedence over standard movement physics.

Troubleshooting seam

If feet slide but capsule trajectory is correct, fix animation stride/play rate/warping. If capsule trajectory is wrong, fix movement. If both systems rotate or translate the actor, select one owner before tuning either.