Animation State Machine
Graph of animation states and transitions
Also known as: Animator state machine · Anim BP state machine
Definition
An animation state machine is a graph where each node represents an animation clip or sub-machine and edges represent transitions guarded by conditions (speed, isJumping, isGrounded). It is how engines decide which clip to play and how to blend between them. Both Unity’s Animator and Unreal’s Animation Blueprint expose state machines as the top-level structure of any non-trivial character.
In production
Unity's Animator Controller renders the state machine as a visual graph where each state holds a Motion (clip or blend tree) and transitions check bool, float, or trigger parameters set from gameplay code — a classic beginner bug is leaving "Has Exit Time" enabled on a transition meant to interrupt immediately, causing a noticeable input-lag feel. Unreal's Animation Blueprint exposes the same concept as a state machine node inside the AnimGraph, where transition rules are boolean expressions evaluated against variables exposed from the character Blueprint. Both engines support nested sub-state machines so a "Combat" super-state can contain its own idle/attack/block states without cluttering the top-level locomotion graph. A frequent production issue is transition conflicts — two transitions with overlapping conditions firing in the same frame — which shows up as a character flickering between two poses and is usually debugged by stepping through the Animator window or the AnimGraph debug view during play-in-editor.
