Advanced Avatars

This doc is a general summary of Roblox Avatars and the steps needed to make a custom Avatar from scratch.

Tutorial

Avatars are a large part of personal identity in Roblox. Avatars also play the actual game (usually) so for the most part having a custom character is a pretty good way to allow players to connect with your experience in a more meaningful way.

Let's have a look at the evolution of Roblox Avatars and then how to make your own.

Evolution of Roblox Avatars...

R6 Avatars

The R6 Avatar Rig was the original avatar rig in Roblox. It has 6 joints and ranged in style from blocky to...slightly less blocky. The animation was quite limited as you only had the 6 joints to work with.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we won't be looking at this rig as we can work with something a little more advanced like the R15 Rig.

R15 Avatars

The R15 avatar is what is still used today. It has 15 joints and ranges in style from blocky to basically anything you would like. That said, the most common avatar would be the blockier approach (Rig 2016 above), just with full animation as this seems to be the Roblox style for now.

An advanced avatar has a lot of features that allow you to create quite complex characters, and these are what we'll be looking at in the following docs.

Let's take a moment to look at what is needed.

Rigged Characters

It is possible to have bones affect the model so that it can bend and flex more realistically around joints such as the elbows or knees. The skeleton and bones are called a Rig. Applying those bones to the mesh is called Skinning, which only sounds slightly horrifying. Rigging usually includes both the creation of the Rig and applying the Rig to the mesh.

Attachments

Attachments are 19 points on your avatar that allow the user to attach accessories such as hair, backpacks, or other elements.

Cage Meshes

Cage Meshes are used to allow assets such as jackets to shape according to different characters. Most of the clothes in the Marketplace will align with the Cage assets.

Face Animation

It is possible to set up the face to have animation in game using facial tracking with a webcam or Emotes. This approach uses the Facial Action Coding System, or FACS.

Capped Assets

You will need to have each part of the body capped so that there are less issues when importing the asset. Therefore, each key part, from the head to the feet, is its own closed model.

Capped Avatar parts...

With all this in mind we can start looking at creating your avatar. And for that it's best if we get a head start with some tools.

A lot of the content and assets required for this process can be found on the Avatar Roblox Documentation. That said we will go over a more streamlined approach to it all.

Troubleshooting

Which is the best Avatar type to use?

The types of avatars have evolved considerably over the years since 2006. Which one you use depends on what you are wanting to use if for.

If you want your character to be compatible with assets on the Roblox Marketplace then you will need to use a default Roblox avatar with the specific Rig, Cages, and Attachments.

If you are wanting a completely custom avatar that only works in your experience, then you can do whatever you like, you would most likely need to set up the character controller yourself as well as create your own animations.

In this doc