🔰 Video overview

A game-ready, low-poly stylized squirrel for Unreal Engine 5.

Rigged and animated skeletal mesh, 6 fur color variants, 14 animations, and a complete Blueprint ambient wildlife AI system that makes small animals roam, pause, play idle animations, flee from the player, die, and respawn.

The AI is not squirrel-only: it can drive any custom critter through a species Data Asset, with no Blueprint edits.

Built for high performance - runs with near-zero game-thread cost. 100% Blueprint, no C++, no plugin dependencies.

Ideal for: open-world and survival games, cozy/farming sims, fantasy villages, forest and park scenes, hunting games, background fauna / ambient life in any level, mobile and VR projects that need cheap animated wildlife.

🔰What's inside

🔹 Mesh

• 4 LODs: 4,026 triangles / 2,536 vertices,

• One material slot, so each squirrel is a single draw call.

• Custom 35-bone skeleton.

• IK Rig included for UE's IK Retargeter.

• Control Rig for posing and animating in-engine.

🔹 Materials

One master material, six instances: red, brown, dark brown, black, gold, white. All colors share a single 2K texture set (normal + packed ORM stay, only the albedo swaps).

🔹 Animations

14 sequences at 30 fps: alerted; eating; 4 Idles; crawl, trot, slow jump and sprint; sprint to Idle and idle to sprint transitions; death and sprint to death. Root motion + In-place.

🔹 AI behaviors

Event-driven, no Ticks: critters only execute at movement-leg boundaries (pick target → AIMoveTo → callback → pause timer). One Director actor does all distance checks on a pulse (distance-squared, no AIPerception components).

- Behaviors: Critters are roaming around the navmesh. If any threat approaches, they flee to a safe distance. Critters don't react to static threats. Die from any damage. Respawn after a set time.

🔰 Setup

1. Place any number of BP_Critter actors and set their Species to DA_Squirrel.

2. Place one BP_CritterDirector.

3. Ensure the level has a NavMeshBoundsVolume. Press Play.