CharacterAnimator

Drives the character's Unity Animator by converting motor velocity into smoothed, normalized animation parameters (VelocityX, VelocityZ). Converts world-space velocity to local space and applies frame-rate-independent smoothing.

Definition

Namespace: Paragon.Townskeep.CharacterSystem Assembly: Townskeep.dll

[Serializable]
public class CharacterAnimator : CharacterComponent

Inheritance: ParagonObject → ParagonComponent<Character> → CharacterComponent → CharacterAnimator

Remarks

CharacterAnimator bridges the gap between the character's physics-driven movement and the Animator controller. Each frame it:

1. Reads the character's world velocity from CharacterMotor

2. Converts it to local space relative to the character's transform

3. Normalizes it by MoveSpeed to produce a -1..1 range

4. Smoothly interpolates the Animator parameters toward the target values

The smoothing prevents jarring animation transitions when velocity changes abruptly (e.g., direction reversals, sudden stops).

Animator Parameter Contract

The target Animator Controller must have these float parameters:

Parameter	Range	Description
VelocityX	-1..1	Normalized lateral movement (strafe)
VelocityZ	-1..1	Normalized forward/backward movement

If these parameters are missing from the Animator Controller, Animator.GetFloat() / SetFloat() will silently return 0 or no-op, resulting in no animation blending.

Quick Lookup

Goal	How
Set smoothing speed	Adjust smoothingSpeed in Inspector (default: 10)
Understand velocity range	Values are normalized to -1..1 by Motor.MoveSpeed
Add new animation params	Extend UpdateAnimationParameters() logic

Fields

smoothingSpeed

Controls how fast animation parameters interpolate toward the target velocity. Higher values = snappier response, lower values = smoother blending.

[SerializeField]
private float smoothingSpeed = 10.0f;

Methods

OnInitialize (override)

Caches the Animator and CharacterMotor references from the owning Character.

protected override void OnInitialize()

• Finds the Animator via Character.GetComponentInChildren<Animator>()

• Gets the CharacterMotor via Character.Motor

Tick (override)

Called per-frame by the character's update loop. Updates the normalized local velocity, then applies smoothed values to the Animator.

protected override void Tick(float dt)

Parameter	Type	Description
dt	float	Delta time for this frame

Common Pitfalls

Missing Animator on character prefab OnInitialize() searches for an Animator via GetComponentInChildren. If no Animator component exists on the character or its children, the animator field will be null, causing NullReferenceException in UpdateAnimationParameters().

Motor not initialized CharacterMotor must be accessible via Character.Motor at initialization time. Ensure the motor component is added and initialized before the animator component.

Velocity normalization assumes MoveSpeed > 0 If Motor.MoveSpeed is zero, the normalization division will produce NaN/Infinity, corrupting animation parameters.

See Also

• CharacterComponent — base class for all character services

• ParagonComponent<T> — generic component base class