This mod will replace the normal speed animation (Vanilla Canter) with new Trot animation. Vanilla Trot animation will be replaced with new Walk animation because it's already broken. Vanilla Gallop animation will be replaced with new Gallop.
Since the working logic of the horse behavior file and animations in the game is determined according to the current speed, and since the transition process between two animations, which we can call 'blending', occurs at any inbetween speed, it is not possible for me to solve all the problems that occur in such situations, such as animation stuttering or skating. So my advice is not to use mods like Horses Simply Turn Better or Scrolling Speedwhile riding. Instead, use the Better Horses - Stamina and Speed (SPID) mod if you want to increase your horse's speed.
Another misconception is that a very good animation will look perfect in the game, or that the animation can be improved by doing simple things. That's not the case. Not only animation itself is important but physics rules are also applied whenever the horse's legs are moving. Actually, end result you see has a lot of factors in it like current speed, animation blending, angle of the terrain, ik of the bones. So when you have a suggestion, comment directly on the problem. Instead of saying "the horse is skating when he walks", say whether the walking animation should be faster or slower in order to not create skating. That's more helpful.
All the limitations in the vanilla version of the game are things I don't plan to fix. So don't talk about problems that exists in the vanilla version of the game. If there is an issue that this mod creates which is not in the vanilla version, please share it so I can try to fix it. (My horse doesn't turn is not one of them. If he doesn't turn in vanilla, he won't turn with this mod). Specific to the skating problem, I aim to avoid skating at vanilla speeds. Other than that, custom speeds are something I won't try to solve.
Sorry if I was a bit harsh in what I said. After working on this topic for so long and getting comments like "this should be like this" and "that should be like that" from people who don't know much about the subject, I realized that I should talk a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes. Don't let this discourage you from requesting a feature. For example, I've already added a feature request for turn animations when Galloping.
I hope you like the mod. If you like it and want to support it, you can endorse it.
> Do I plan to change the order of Walk, Trot and Gallop? Unfortunately no. The whole point of this mod is that it implements these three with given order.
> Do I plan to add Transition animations (Walk -> Trot, Trot -> Gallop)? As much as I would like to, it's quite difficult to add them. So unfortunately no.
> Ground speed and animation speed are not matched? If you're saying this in a completely vanilla version of the game, please share it with a video. That way I can try to solve it. But if you are saying this with custom speeds, unfortunately I can't solve it.
> Are there any other mods you recommend besides this mod? I recommend these mods for those who are interested:
> Is there / should there be a compability issue? As far as I know, there should be none. Because this mod only changes the existing native animations in the game. If there will be any issue to be known, I will add it to this section.
These animations are SOOOO CUTE. I especially love the attention to detail with the mouth and ear movement. In some speeds the horse does seem to glide on the ground a bit though.
I shot a short video showcasing the animations. I'm not a professional video maker by any means, but I think I managed to capture the animations in different speeds and from different angles. Feel free to add the video to your page if you want.
Wow. Thanks for the video demostration. It's well made showcase I can say! I would like to put into description when I get time. In some speeds, even legs are not moving correctly. I believe it's because of the game's physics engine determines what animation to play based on current speed. And if current speed falls between two different animation (like walk and trot) it blends these two animations based on some other factors. 'Blending' you see is not perfect and have artifacts all over place of the animation.
Yeah, the Skyrim animation blending is really tricky to work around I hear. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda made the animations first, and then designed the blending to work with those specific animations.
Thanks for sharing the video. My set up is so rancid, I can't even think about adding s#*! "just to test" unless I want to spend hours shuffling activations around.
Salutations, can I have your permission to port it to console users? I'll leave all creadits to you and also links to the mod page and your profile as well. Thank you xD
Just wanted to say that I love your animations. They really look great. Just unfortunately doesn't match the variable speed of my owned horses, which all have different speed upgrades from CH. Current horse has speedmult 120, and the ice skating effect is very pronounced. Were I using a mod with slower horses I'd definitely use this though!
I take it back. Kept coming back to hating horse animations, nothing else looked good, so simply modded speeds myself until skating was minimalized. Now I'm using this mod and loving it! The turning animations in particular are just so good; it drives home how clunky vanilla animations are.
I understand it must be very dificult to do realistic horse animations on any game none the less in a 14 year old game. But you did an outstanding job.
I see some people mention some words about a bit of floatiness feeling or ice skating behavior. From what i have seen. i could be wrong.. horse animations in vanilla only move the horse to the front.. they dont bounce.. the rider animation mod plus your mod (as suggested in another post) makes your animation look even greater imo.
If you permit me a humble aproach to make it even more realistic. its just an opinion. and if you are not willing to do.. i could give it a try myself if i could have your permission of course.
Is to make the trot animation about 30% faster if thats possible. galop and walk i believe are spot on with speed.
I wish you all the best and thank you so much for making this wonderful mod and sharing it with the community.
Edit. by the way. im creating a new farm animals mod for SE. and i am adding new horse breeds. skins and i was wondering if it is possible to vary the animation speeds for different horses using the ck. i would love to create a system where i could assign different speeds, stamina values and animation speed to many different horse types.. On the farm animals mod i would love to be able to use a animation type for the vanilla stable horses..but also have an alternative animation for other breeds in the wild or for sale. using light horse mod. anyway, if you ever needed any help on your project i would be glad to help you out. all the best =)
Hey, seeing this comment of yours truly made me happy! First, about your mod, please do it. Every contribution to the modding community should be welcomed (even tho some toxic people can say otherwise). And to answer your questions, I believe you can make use of SPID or Skypatcher (for assigning different speeds, stamina based on whatever you like (e.g. horse breeds) using conditions and keywords) and Open Animation Replacer (for assigning different animations based on, again, whatever you like using conditions and keywords). With dynamically editing the game world without touching CK's records has several benefits. Most important one of them is preventing any compatibility issues with other mods.
About the part of faster Trot animation and generally offering your help, well, actually, I'm having trouble with that, I need feedback on why the skating occurs and whether it would be better to increase or decrease the animation speeds. It's even better for me if people can try the test versions I could send and give feedback quickly. The most effective way to do this is to chat with people who want to test it on Discord. But I'm not sure how to take this process forward.
in my opinion i believe the ice skating effect is only an ilusion and nothing wrong with your animation. Your animation is beautiful. But i believe that when you trot.. (which is the most used animation) the animation plays in a way that it is slower in relation to the speed the horse slides forward. If you can try a test version where you could increase the speed maybe of sprint by 10% and the trot one 30% or something similar. Your animations would merge perfectly with the speed of the horse moving forward and it would look like the horse is actually having grip to the ground. lets talk on discord if you like, i would love to help you out or test the mod farther. im working on many Skyrim projects right now i am planning to release very soon. i got plenty of time in the PC to help you out =)
This is amazing! I would like to say though- I saw you explain why the trot feels feels 'floaty,' but it still feels oddly mismatched with the horse speed for me. The horse moves faster than the legs would carry it. That might just be compatibility on my end. The more concerning issue, though: for me, gallop doesn't work at all. Sprint does nothing, I just can't gallop. The gallop animation is my favorite, too... :(
Hey thank you for the feedback. But what exactly do you mean by saying "The horse moves faster than the legs would carry it."? Should the Trot animation (animation itself not the horse) be faster or slower? Also for the issue you've encountered about the Gallop, when you sprint, what animation do you see or none at all?
Hey there, sorry for the late reply! It's... hard to explain, the first one. The horse is going x speed, but the animation looks like it should only go y speed. Like... imagine seeing someone walking, but the speed they're moving is more akin to a full run. Kind of a sliding thing, maybe? But, I don't know what my horse's speeds are/if it's touched by other mods. As for the sprint- no animation at all, sadly. But last night, I was able to gallop randomly, so maybe it's a momentum thing?
He means that either the animation is too fast or too slow. either way it is mismatched to the movement speed of the horse. I believe there are annotations to decide what speed an animation should play at without altering movements peed. Not sure if it works for vanilla animations though, which this horse animations would fall under.
Yeah! Kinda like a skating thing. Not quite skating, but close- it feels I suppose too fast, at least during a trot animation. Like it'd look like a trot if the horse moved up or down, but they just slide forward? It's easiest to notice on horses you see moving, like a guard's horse from Mounted Patrols gliding past.
Do you see an improvement with latest update tho? I specifically added up and down movement to the Trot. Also I tried to improve skating issue for other gaits too. Love your feedback.
The newest file as of February 15th, v2.1, still has some skating for the 'default' walk speed (I use gamepad which has a wide array of 'in between' stages, I know, but I'm going off of others' horses, like mounted guards). I also just found AutoHorse (200/10 mod) and the walk the horse NPC chooses looks perfect. But anything faster than a slow walk, but slower than a gallop, looks skate-y, with the horse staying on a flat plane and moving forward too slowly compared to the animation's speed. It's most likely an issue on my end, I just dunno what yet. Beyond this thing though, I absolutely adore this mod, and it's 110% in my permanent load order one way or another!
Hey if you have time, can you send a quick video showcasing the situation where skating occurs. It will help me to understand the issue better and make a decision about should animation speed needs to be increased or decreased.
Would recommend combining this with Riding Animation Overhaul. Loading this mod before that, then add on top these turn animations in the optimal section. Will give a much more responsive & appealing exsperience with non replacer horses. Great work!
I do also think that these animations look better for native looking horses (short and thick legs instead of long and thin). It's probably because even if you do change the horses' appearance to slim one, the skeleton doesn't change nonetheless.
With the 2.0 update and the release of the add-on for OAR, horseback riding has become fantastic! Thanks for continuing to work on the mods. Do you plan to add turns for the walking mode?
P.S. Now I am testing your mod together with Horse Behaviour Improvements and Riding Animation Overhaul - RAO ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/113535?tab=files&file_id=478624 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/102881?tab=files&file_id=529977 ). and so far it seems to me that they are compatible and complement each other perfectly.
There are 4 animations I've always been waiting for. :)
1: Horse animation √ (e.g. horses eating grass, lifting their hind leg, scratching their head...) 2: Khajiit/Argonia tail animation (e.g. the tail moves slowly to the left-right and is sometimes stroked (idle)) 3: New animations for children (e.g. throwing a small leather ball in the air and catching it (Idle)) 4: Dogs get more animations (e.g. chases its tail, eats something on the ground, scratches itself, shakes itself)
2: Khajiit/Argonia tail animation (e.g. the tail moves slowly to the left-right and is sometimes stroked (idle))
For animal tails I recommend Dint's Animated Animal Tails. Used in conjunction with Dint's Face Part Mod for his animated animal ears it makes for a fantastically animated Khajiit! I don't believe there's any official Racemenu integration on those, I did make a small racemenu integration for my personal load order but since the mods are pay walled I never released it... that and it's pretty janky lol.
One change I'd love to see in this mod is the "run" speed being a canter again, like in vanilla. Atm, it's been turned into a trot, which is slower than a run/canter but faster than walking. Vanilla already has a trot mode that naturally occurs with a controller, but it's sadly impossible to go that speed with mouse/keyboard without the help of mods.
In other words, I like the vanilla natural horse transition of: Walk (vanilla "walk" mode) --> Trot (vanilla "trot" mode only available with gamepad/controller) --> Canter (vanilla "run" mode) --> Gallop (vanilla "sprint" mode).
This mod currently makes the normal trot mode redundant, and also skips/removes the horses' natural canter gait: Walk (vanilla "walk" mode) --> more walking (vanilla "trot" mode only available with gamepad/controller) --> Trot (vanilla "run" mode) --> Gallop (vanilla "sprint" mode).
Thanks for your info in the new sticky post! I'm very excited about this mod. It's something I don't have the knowledge to make and haven't had time to learn, so I've been waiting for someone to tackle it since the game's release---even more so after playing games like RDR2.
This mod will replace the normal speed animation with the Trot animation. Vanilla Trot animation will be replaced with Walk animation because it's broken. Vanilla Canter animation will be replaced with Gallop.
Does this mean that a return to the vanilla gait speed divisions is not going to be considered?
Yes, that was always my original intention when I made this mod. Even a trivia: That's why the name of the mod contains the word "Trot". The Trot as the main movement of the horse
Got it. Thanks for the reply! Last question: any plans for expanding on or redoing horse idle animations? The vanilla ones aren't bad, but I like your attention to detail in the movement animations and would be just as excited to see some of that brought to the stationary ones.
79 comments
This mod will replace the normal speed animation (Vanilla Canter) with new Trot animation. Vanilla Trot animation will be replaced with new Walk animation because it's already broken. Vanilla Gallop animation will be replaced with new Gallop.
Since the working logic of the horse behavior file and animations in the game is determined according to the current speed, and since the transition process between two animations, which we can call 'blending', occurs at any inbetween speed, it is not possible for me to solve all the problems that occur in such situations, such as animation stuttering or skating. So my advice is not to use mods like Horses Simply Turn Better or Scrolling Speed while riding. Instead, use the Better Horses - Stamina and Speed (SPID) mod if you want to increase your horse's speed.
Another misconception is that a very good animation will look perfect in the game, or that the animation can be improved by doing simple things. That's not the case. Not only animation itself is important but physics rules are also applied whenever the horse's legs are moving. Actually, end result you see has a lot of factors in it like current speed, animation blending, angle of the terrain, ik of the bones. So when you have a suggestion, comment directly on the problem. Instead of saying "the horse is skating when he walks", say whether the walking animation should be faster or slower in order to not create skating. That's more helpful.
All the limitations in the vanilla version of the game are things I don't plan to fix. So don't talk about problems that exists in the vanilla version of the game. If there is an issue that this mod creates which is not in the vanilla version, please share it so I can try to fix it. (My horse doesn't turn is not one of them. If he doesn't turn in vanilla, he won't turn with this mod). Specific to the skating problem, I aim to avoid skating at vanilla speeds. Other than that, custom speeds are something I won't try to solve.
Sorry if I was a bit harsh in what I said. After working on this topic for so long and getting comments like "this should be like this" and "that should be like that" from people who don't know much about the subject, I realized that I should talk a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes. Don't let this discourage you from requesting a feature. For example, I've already added a feature request for turn animations when Galloping.
I hope you like the mod. If you like it and want to support it, you can endorse it.
Thanks for trying the mod!
> Do I plan to change the order of Walk, Trot and Gallop?
Unfortunately no. The whole point of this mod is that it implements these three with given order.
> Do I plan to add Transition animations (Walk -> Trot, Trot -> Gallop)?
As much as I would like to, it's quite difficult to add them. So unfortunately no.
> Ground speed and animation speed are not matched?
If you're saying this in a completely vanilla version of the game, please share it with a video. That way I can try to solve it. But if you are saying this with custom speeds, unfortunately I can't solve it.
> Are there any other mods you recommend besides this mod?
I recommend these mods for those who are interested:
Horse Riding Camera Tweak (Witcher style camera)
Better Horses - Stamina and Speed (SPID)
Horseback - Witcher-style horse stamina mechanic (SKSE)
First Person Horse Riding (For Kingdom Come Deliverance vibes)
> Is there / should there be a compability issue?
As far as I know, there should be none. Because this mod only changes the existing native animations in the game. If there will be any issue to be known, I will add it to this section.
I shot a short video showcasing the animations. I'm not a professional video maker by any means, but I think I managed to capture the animations in different speeds and from different angles. Feel free to add the video to your page if you want.
Thank you xD
I understand it must be very dificult to do realistic horse animations on any game none the less in a 14 year old game.
But you did an outstanding job.
I see some people mention some words about a bit of floatiness feeling or ice skating behavior. From what i have seen. i could be wrong.. horse animations in vanilla only move the horse to the front.. they dont bounce.. the rider animation mod plus your mod (as suggested in another post) makes your animation look even greater imo.
If you permit me a humble aproach to make it even more realistic. its just an opinion. and if you are not willing to do.. i could give it a try myself if i could have your permission of course.
Is to make the trot animation about 30% faster if thats possible. galop and walk i believe are spot on with speed.
I wish you all the best and thank you so much for making this wonderful mod and sharing it with the community.
Edit. by the way. im creating a new farm animals mod for SE. and i am adding new horse breeds. skins and i was wondering if it is possible to vary the animation speeds for different horses using the ck. i would love to create a system where i could assign different speeds, stamina values and animation speed to many different horse types.. On the farm animals mod i would love to be able to use a animation type for the vanilla stable horses..but also have an alternative animation for other breeds in the wild or for sale. using light horse mod.
anyway, if you ever needed any help on your project i would be glad to help you out. all the best =)
About the part of faster Trot animation and generally offering your help, well, actually, I'm having trouble with that, I need feedback on why the skating occurs and whether it would be better to increase or decrease the animation speeds. It's even better for me if people can try the test versions I could send and give feedback quickly. The most effective way to do this is to chat with people who want to test it on Discord. But I'm not sure how to take this process forward.
in my opinion i believe the ice skating effect is only an ilusion and nothing wrong with your animation. Your animation is beautiful.
But i believe that when you trot.. (which is the most used animation) the animation plays in a way that it is slower in relation to the speed the horse slides forward.
If you can try a test version where you could increase the speed maybe of sprint by 10% and the trot one 30% or something similar. Your animations would merge perfectly with the speed of the horse moving forward and it would look like the horse is actually having grip to the ground.
lets talk on discord if you like, i would love to help you out or test the mod farther. im working on many Skyrim projects right now i am planning to release very soon. i got plenty of time in the PC to help you out =)
As for the sprint- no animation at all, sadly. But last night, I was able to gallop randomly, so maybe it's a momentum thing?
P.S. Now I am testing your mod together with Horse Behaviour Improvements and Riding Animation Overhaul - RAO ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/113535?tab=files&file_id=478624 https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/102881?tab=files&file_id=529977 ). and so far it seems to me that they are compatible and complement each other perfectly.
1:
Horse animation√(e.g. horses eating grass, lifting their hind leg, scratching their head...)
2: Khajiit/Argonia tail animation
(e.g. the tail moves slowly to the left-right and is sometimes stroked (idle))
3: New animations for children
(e.g. throwing a small leather ball in the air and catching it (Idle))
4: Dogs get more animations
(e.g. chases its tail, eats something on the ground, scratches itself, shakes itself)
Thank you very much for your great work. ♥
For animal tails I recommend Dint's Animated Animal Tails. Used in conjunction with Dint's Face Part Mod for his animated animal ears it makes for a fantastically animated Khajiit! I don't believe there's any official Racemenu integration on those, I did make a small racemenu integration for my personal load order but since the mods are pay walled I never released it... that and it's pretty janky lol.
[Dint999] Animated Animal Tails
[Dint999] Animated Cat Ears - Face Part Mod
I don't think I know of any like this, but +1 vote from me for this! Sounds awesome!
Go checkout Casual Dog Animations (Dar-OAR) for the chasing of the tail, rolling on the ground, and other playful animations.
I also use Animated Dog Feeding for that extra little bump in immersion.
To 2 - I know the Mod.
To 3 - +1 i hope anyone like Kids and can make animation idle for Children.
To 4 - oh yes...thats nice!
In other words, I like the vanilla natural horse transition of: Walk (vanilla "walk" mode) --> Trot (vanilla "trot" mode only available with gamepad/controller) --> Canter (vanilla "run" mode) --> Gallop (vanilla "sprint" mode).
This mod currently makes the normal trot mode redundant, and also skips/removes the horses' natural canter gait: Walk (vanilla "walk" mode) --> more walking (vanilla "trot" mode only available with gamepad/controller) --> Trot (vanilla "run" mode) --> Gallop (vanilla "sprint" mode).