Velocity Vectors

Before moving on to the next step, let's explain what you are doing when you get the velocity of the character and promote the vector length of that vector to the Speed variable.

What is velocity? Velocity is a vector that has a given magnitude and a direction. To think about it another way, a vector can be drawn like an arrow. The length of the arrow represents the magnitude, or strength, and the direction of the arrowhead represents the direction. So, if you want to know how fast the player character is moving, you will want to get the length of that vector. That is exactly what you are doing when we use the GetVelocity function and the VectorLength function on the returned velocity vector; you are getting the value of the Speed variable of our character. That is why you store that value in a variable and use it to control the Blend Space, as shown in the following figure, which is an example of vectors. Where one has a positive (right) direction with...