Smoothly animate a walking waypoint AI character to turn left or right

[anonymous_user_5e0803e7]

Hello I’m fairly new to Unreal Engine 4 and I understand basic blueprint setups as well as editing actors and such. I’m trying to smoothly animate an AI to turn left and right that’s navigated by waypoints while they walk to specific destinations.

And I was able to make that work by using this tutorial: unrealenginetutorials.com

I also used MIXAMO’s ‘walking in place animation’ on the mesh I’m using so the character walks fine towards the waypoints and to it’s final destination.
Here’s what it looks like right now: Waypoint AI non-smooth turning animation - YouTube

My only issue is when the character is supposed to turn left or right, it looks really choppy and not smooth? Quite an abrupt turn. I basically want to make the character look like they’re naturally turning. I’ve tried blending the walking animation with a left_turn or right_turn animation but I don’t think I was implementing the blend correctly. Also I’ve tried using root animation so when the character turns right, the root follows the character but I’m not sure how to program the AI to recognize that animation when they’re turning, etc.

I’ve been stuck for the past couple of days trying to figure this out but any help would be very appreciated!

[anonymous_user_5e0803e7]

Actually I just figured it out, but I used a way a way that’s probably not the most efficient for future purposes but it was simple enough for me to do. I basically added a trigger box to play the ‘turn_right’ animation which includes a root that I added in maya. So when the AI character walks in the trigger box, the turning animation will play along with a 1 second delay, and return to walking.