How can I play different animations depending on the direction my character is moving?

Archived Forums Questions & Answers
1

I currently have a Walking animation, 2 strafing animations, and the walk animation in reverse, but I am unsure how to make the game notice what direction I’m moving so that it can play the correct animation…

Walking = forward relative to the character
Strafe Left = when I move to the left
ETC.

I thought about just doing something like
If(Input.GetButtonDown(“w”))
{
animation.CrossFade"Default Walk"
}

If(Input.GetButtonDown("a"))
{
     animation.CrossFade"Left Strafe"
}

If(Input.GetButtonDown("d"))
{
     animation.CrossFade"Right Strafe"
}

If(Input.GetButtonDown("s"))
{
     animation["Default Walk"].speed = -1;
     animation["walk"].time = animation["walk"].length;
     animation.CrossFade("Default Walk",0.2);
}

But I was wondering is there a way to do something similar using the

If(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal")
{
    Controller.Move((horizontal * (walkSpeed * Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"))) * Time.deltaTime);
}

If(Input.GetAxis("Vertical")
{
    Controller.Move((vertical * (walkSpeed * Input.GetAxis("Vertical"))) * Time.deltaTime);
}
2

If you go to Windows inside unity and open the animator tab you can place multiple animations there and link them up to gether, so you can make smooth transitions between running forward and sideways. Simply place an Animation controller on your animated mesh’s root bone. All you have to do then is write a script that detects the movement/direction by pressing buttons or realtime object position and link those variables to the variables insde your animation controller and you are done. I used it to create first person animations of the arm going from idle to holding stuff to throwing them.

Here is a tutorial from the staff itself, and it includes andvanced movement merging.

it is fairly easy to get off with