[Update] September 25, 2023
Hello Developers,
We’re building an immersive platform for communication and connection that has safety and civility at its foundation. Every day, 66 million people connect on Roblox to explore, learn, and tell stories together. Our vision is to enhance your social interactions while reflecting the real world and even going beyond it.
Use camera to animate your avatar with your movement
Starting today, we’re rolling out another new way for users to express themselves and communicate on Roblox. Any user 13 and older will now be able to use their camera to animate their avatar with their movement. This feature is part of a series of interactive features we have available so people can communicate and express themselves like never before – in the most natural, real-time, and immersive ways. In 2021, we started this rollout of communication features with the chat with voice beta, and most recently released lip sync.
How would I benefit from enabling camera input for my experience?
We are giving you the choice to enable immersive features in your experience that can drive deeper engagement with users. We know from the chat with voice beta that there is a positive relationship between experiences that have voice chat enabled and user engagement — voice users spend more time in those experiences. Similar to chat with voice, providing users with more ways to express themselves, like camera-enabled avatar animation, is expected to lead to richer, more engaging ways for them to interact with each other in experiences.
For users, why does Roblox ask for their consent to use their device camera?
In order to animate their avatar, users will need to consent to provide Roblox with temporary device camera access. Roblox does not record or store any of the information that is captured from a user’s device camera. For more information, please review Roblox’s Facial Animation Privacy Notice.
Is any of the data stored when users enable their camera?
No, we take your privacy seriously. When you use your camera to animate your avatar with your movement, animation keyframes created by this process are deleted in real-time after they have been used and cannot be shared. Video from your camera never leaves your device. Learn more here.
How do I enable this feature in my experience?
To enable this, both the experience and the user need to opt-in. Here is how to enable your users to animate their avatars using their camera in your experience:
- Open your experience in Studio
- Go to File → Game Settings
- Navigate to the new Communication tab on the left side of the Game Settings screen.
- There are toggles to Enable Microphone and Enable Camera. You need to toggle Enable Camera input so the selector turns from gray to green.*
- Optional: For greater communication among users within your experience, you can also enable chat with voice by toggling the Enable Microphone option.
For more information on enabling microphone usage in your experience, please see here.
Testing
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In order to test this update, you will need to turn on the setting to “Use camera to animate your avatar with your movement” on your user account.
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This can be found in Account Settings > Privacy Tab
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Under Inputs, toggle the “Use camera to animate your avatar with your movement” setting
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Testing is available using ‘Team Test’ in Studio.
While this feature is available to all developers immediately, we are gradually rolling out access for users. You may find this feature not yet immediately available for your user account. Please be patient while we enable access for everyone.
For users, how does enabling their camera impact facial animation?
For users that enable their device camera and have a head equipped with facial animation, their avatar will mirror their facial expressions in real-time when interacting with other people or having fun on their own.
For more details on how a user can enable their camera input setting, please check out the Help FAQ.
How will users know if their avatar’s head supports animating their avatar with their movement?
In the Roblox app, a user can navigate to the Avatar page, and for either Customize or Marketplace, select Heads and Body. Under the Style section they will see heads that support facial animation.
For both Customize and Marketplace, the icon on the thumbnail, a winking face, lets them know the head supports facial animation. When a head that supports facial animation is equipped, they will see their character blinking and smiling.
How will users find experiences that support camera-enabled avatar animation?
The Experience details section will inform users of experiences that support enhanced communication features. In the example below, the Communication section lists “Camera” letting users know that camera-enabled avatar animation is enabled in this experience.
Updates to the in experience UI
To enhance user control of both microphone and the new camera input within an experience, we are making some updates and additions to the in-experience UI and menu. When a user joins a camera-enabled experience, they will now have a camera button appear above their avatar’s head. If they join a microphone and camera-enabled experience and they have also enabled microphone and camera inputs, they will have both microphone and camera buttons appear above their avatar’s head.
Users can turn their camera and microphone on or off independently. We’ve recently released lip sync, lip syncing creates facial animation in real-time by inferring the shapes a user’s mouth makes for specific sounds during speech. If a user turns on just the microphone input, their avatar’s mouth will lip sync based on their voice input. When a user enables their camera, their full facial expressions and head movements are matched by their avatar using information from their device camera.
Self View
When a user enables their device camera, it also automatically brings up a new Self View window showing the user’s avatar. Self View helps make it easy and fun for a user to see how their avatar’s facial animation reacts to their camera input in real-time. Self View automatically moves the mic and camera icons from above their avatar’s head to a shelf underneath the Self View window.
Self View is not required for a user to use their camera. It can be repositioned or closed by the user at any time (closing the window will re-enable the mic and camera icons above their avatar’s head).
Self View for users
Microphone and camera controls are also accessible to the user by tapping the Roblox menu icon on the upper left side of the screen. Across the top bar of the menu are controls to mute all, turn on and off camera and microphone inputs, and show/hide Self View.
We hope you enjoy seeing how this new and exciting way for users to express themselves leads to richer connections and conversations within your experiences.
If you have any feedback, please let us know in the comments. Thank you for your continued support!
