With the addition of a CharacterMovementComponent, a CapsuleComponent, and a SkeletalMeshComponent, the Pawn class is extended into the highly-featured Character class.
A Character is designed for a vertically-oriented player representation that can walk, run, jump, fly, and swim through the world. This class also contains
implementations of basic networking and input models.
SkeletalMeshComponent
Unlike Pawns, Characters come with a SkeletalMeshComponent to enable advanced animations that use a skeleton. It is possible for other Skeletal Meshes to be added to Character-derived classes,
but this is the main Skeletal Mesh associated with the Character. For more on Skeletal Meshes, see:
Skeletal Mesh Topics
CapsuleComponent
The CapsuleComponent is used for movement collision. In order to calculate complicated geometries for the CharacterMovementComponent, there is an assumption that the collision component in the Character class is a vertically-oriented capsule. For more on Collision, see:
Capsule Component Topics
CharacterMovementComponent
The CharacterMovementComponent allows avatars not using rigid body physics to move by walking, running, jumping, flying, falling, and swimming.
It is specific to Characters, and cannot be implemented by any other class. Properties that can be set in the CharacterMovementComponent include
values for falling and walking friction, speeds for travel through air and water and across land, buoyancy, gravity scale, and the physics forces the
Character can exert on Physics objects. The CharacterMovementComponent also includes root motion parameters that come from the animation and are already
transformed in world space, ready for use by physics.