A gait is a specific way of moving, a pattern of footfalls and leg motion. A horse’s natural gaits are walk, trot, canter and gallop. These correlate with speed (i.e. a walk is the slowest and a gallop is the fastest), but they are not defined by speed: a horse at an extended trot may well be faster than a horse going at a collected canter.

We classify gaits by how many beats they have: the trot is a two-beat gait because two diagonal pairs of legs move at the same time. The walk is a four-beat gait, because every leg moves individually. The canter is a three-beat gait, with two legs moving simultaneously and the other two moving individually.

There are breeds of horses that have additional gaits: in Europe, the Icelandic horse is the most famous example, with its four-beat tölt and a two-beat pace. In the US, the American Saddlebred and Tennessee Walking Horse are well known for their ambling gaits. For most conversations about horse gaits however, we can safely limit ourselves to the standard gaits.

While this may sound a bit specific and overly technical, the truth is that anyone who has spent a little bit of time observing horses knows what the standard gaits look like and will be able to tell “wait, this looks off” when a digital rendition gets them wrong.



The Walk Cycle

Horse Animset Pro is a complete riding controller with a lot of different animations. I have not bought the asset myself, but it is available on the Unity Asset Store for 60$. The price is low, considering the sheer breadth of features.

Unfortunately, its walk animation is completely wrong, resulting in a stiff and awkward motion plainly noticeable as incorrect to anyone knows what horse gaits are. In the animation, the leg pairs move at the same time instead of individually, which makes for an awkward little pause whenever a pair of leg has come down. Instead of a natural four-beat walk, the gait is two-beat.