Hey Zeldag thanks for the reply.
I am using mecanim and exporting from Maya.
I'm sure I have tried the things you suggested but still get issues.
I have animated the character moving away from world zero.
I am trying to make 3rd person top down with camera just following, no rotation.
I would imagine a lot of people are doing the same but can only find tutorials where the
character walks side to side or back, and I don't want to use smooth look at direction
because of the sliding feet thing, the animated turn looks so much better.
So an issue is that if he rotates to a new direction using the root once the transition in mecanim
goes back to idle he slides back to the idle pose which is initially facing forward.
The other thing is that if I can get him to stay facing right that will determine what animation will
play next depending on what key is pressed.
For example if he is facing right and the player presses 'W' he should rotate left 90 to face up.
Or from the right he presses 'A' he should play rotate 180 turn to be facing left, ( much like the smooth look at direction works with the default input keys of WASD)
Hope that makes sense!