Tech Blog
December 3, 2025
Explore the updates to the Game Animation Sample Project in UE 5.7
We’re back with an updated Game Animation Sample Project for the release of Unreal Engine 5.7, available for you to download on Fab.
First released in UE 5.4, the Game Animation Sample Project (or as the community has coined it, GASP) continues to deliver free animations and best-practice character animation setups for Unreal Engine; boost education and knowledge of game animation in UE; and act as a starting point for anyone’s creative game project.
For UE 5.7, the team has focused its efforts on the addition of the Mover Plugin (currently in Experimental). The Mover Plugin supports movement of actors with rollback networking using the Network Prediction Plugin or Chaos Networked Physics. This plugin will eventually be the successor of the Character Movement Component, with the goal of enabling gameplay developers to focus on crafting motion without having to be experts in networking.
First released in UE 5.4, the Game Animation Sample Project (or as the community has coined it, GASP) continues to deliver free animations and best-practice character animation setups for Unreal Engine; boost education and knowledge of game animation in UE; and act as a starting point for anyone’s creative game project.
For UE 5.7, the team has focused its efforts on the addition of the Mover Plugin (currently in Experimental). The Mover Plugin supports movement of actors with rollback networking using the Network Prediction Plugin or Chaos Networked Physics. This plugin will eventually be the successor of the Character Movement Component, with the goal of enabling gameplay developers to focus on crafting motion without having to be experts in networking.
We’ve added a new character to GASP that uses the Mover Plugin, along with a new locomotion dataset. The first locomotion dataset we released was designed to be as responsive as possible, but this came at the expense of some of the animation quality. For the new setup, we aim to have a better balance between responsiveness and animation quality while trying to reduce the amount of data required to achieve it. This also means we’ve added 400 new animations to the project for people to play with!
We’ve added two new movement modes to Mover: Simple Spring Walking Mode and Smooth Walking Mode. Simple Spring Walking Mode simulates character movement using two simple springs, one for velocity and one for rotation, each of which can be configured separately to achieve the desired smoothness.
Smooth Walking Mode uses a more complex behavior to enable finer tuning of the character feel, making it possible to recreate similar movement to the legacy Character Movement Component but with smoother velocity and rotation. Both of these classes derive from Simple Walking Mode: a new abstract base class that you can easily extend in C++ or Blueprint to create custom movement behaviors.
Smooth Walking Mode uses a more complex behavior to enable finer tuning of the character feel, making it possible to recreate similar movement to the legacy Character Movement Component but with smoother velocity and rotation. Both of these classes derive from Simple Walking Mode: a new abstract base class that you can easily extend in C++ or Blueprint to create custom movement behaviors.
We’ve also added a new Smart Object level, with our first iteration showcasing how Smart Objects and the new warping improvements work. In addition, we’ve added some basic NPC setups to GASP, enabling NPCs to sit down on benches from multiple approach angles. This is an area we plan to expand even further in future releases of GASP.
With the new Experimental Pose Search Column in Choosers, Choosers and Motion Matching are now closer than ever.
With the new Experimental Pose Search Column in Choosers, Choosers and Motion Matching are now closer than ever.
We’ve added a new slide mechanic to GASP. Now the main character can slide along the ground, including speeding up or slowing down depending on the slope of the terrain. This is also an example of how you can use Blueprint to expand Mover with new user-created movement modes.
As we move towards the Unreal Animation Framework (UAF)—the future replacement for Anim Blueprints—we’ve been moving some of the procedural nodes into Control Rig to lay the foundations for a much deeper integration of Control Rig and UAF. We’ve added a Footplacement Control Rig node in 5.7 as a first step towards this
As for UAF, we wanted to give a little update on where we’re at.
We’re full steam ahead on its development, but you’ll have to wait until 5.8 for a first real look at the new system. While we had hoped to release some sample content using UAF for 5.7, we needed a bit more time to finish and iterate on some of the pieces. For 5.8, we plan to have a character in GASP set up entirely using UAF. While UAF will remain Experimental in 5.8, it should be robust enough for the community to get a first look hands-on with the new system as we continue to develop it towards Production-Ready!
We’re full steam ahead on its development, but you’ll have to wait until 5.8 for a first real look at the new system. While we had hoped to release some sample content using UAF for 5.7, we needed a bit more time to finish and iterate on some of the pieces. For 5.8, we plan to have a character in GASP set up entirely using UAF. While UAF will remain Experimental in 5.8, it should be robust enough for the community to get a first look hands-on with the new system as we continue to develop it towards Production-Ready!
These are just some of the key features that have been added to GASP for 5.7; check out the GASP documentation for more in-depth details on changes to the project.
We hope you enjoy the project and its updates!
We hope you enjoy the project and its updates!