Anthropomorphic Avatars

The Upcoming Changes:

ROBLOX just gave a sneak peak on the upcoming changes for avatars at RDC. You can view the stream here and skip to 3:14:20 for the beginning of the avatar demo. If you’d prefer not to watch it, here are a few screenshots of the proposed changes:

The good:

As Sorcus mentioned in his presentation, continued iteration on the avatars is necessary. R15 isn’t fully complete, and its design needs to be fully fleshed out before the UGC we’re all waiting for can begin, as otherwise we as developers would have to continually update our accessories/etc whenever the avatar changed. Some of you may not agree with the direction it’s headed, but the avatars do need to be finalized.

The bad:

It is necessary to establish what this section will not cover. There are a number of outstanding issues with R15, so some would argue that this kind of change should have been less prioritized. For instance, R15 is used by 75% of players on the site because it looks great, but is only supported by 25% of top games because there are so many in-game issues. While this is definitely important, ROBLOX made the right call prioritizing this change, regardless of whether the direction they took it was great or not. These problems depend on the design of the avatar, so these issues may not even exist when the design changes.

The direction ROBLOX took this change in, however, is disappointing. Instead of an instant round of applause, the announcement of these changes elicited doubt from RDC’s attendees and everyone watching the stream. I can’t help that notice the proposed avatars look eerily similar (except slightly older) to the Avatar 2.0 which elicited such negative criticism that R15 was built from the ground up:

There’s nothing wrong with the proportions or the fact that it’s anthropomorphic (which is great), but that the aesthetic of the character is creepy. It’s unfortunate that we’re coming full circle to what we worked so hard to improve into R15. This is just a single package, but other packages would need to aesthetically fit with this one to prevent immersion from breaking – this is not an aesthetic that would work well with ROBLOX games. Even some of the developers this is targeted at like StyLisS studios have mentioned that they would never want to use this in their games.

I could go into elaborate detail on the upcoming avatar, but as I mentioned earlier, this has already come full-circle, and there’s no need to repeat what has already been discussed to great length in the Avatar 2.0 thread.

Where should we go?

I understand anthropomorphic proportions are extremely difficult to fit into a setting such as ROBLOX, and applaud the ROBLOX staff for all of their hard work so far. This topic was not created with the intention of whining, and I would not have brought it up if I was not willing to shoulder some of that burden as well. I, and I imagine the rest of the forum, are more than happy to put in a ton of effort and work with the ROBLOX staff to improve the vision of the avatar, so don’t be shy to ask us.

What would I suggest ROBLOX do with its avatars? As @glurbman pointed out earlier, @Yourius has been developing some amazing anthropomorphic characters for Q-Clash which could serve as inspiration for the future ROBLOX avatar. They have realistic proportions but do not fall into the uncanny valley at all. Better yet, they fit the ROBLOX aesthetic perfectly because they’re designed for a ROBLOX game:


160 Likes

As I see it if you’re going to strike for a more human character you’ve got to go all the way otherwise it just looks cheap and cringey. I really do like Yourius’s characters really play on the strengths with the current characters. They’re well put together, cartoony, but not implicitly childish. I don’t know what these new characters would look like with some customization, but they look pretty plain as it is.

While the term anthropomorphic covers anything given human qualities. I can’t help but think of the animal people i’m so fond of… and how creepy my avatar would look on that body.

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These really shouldn’t be added. Please.

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me_irl
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jokes aside, these avatars dont feel right when i tested them in the avatar place. they feel a lot more like a cheap knockoff than another avatar feature

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I am curious and I would like to know who is favorable to implant this new avatar. I know this Avatar is still in test but just want to know

EDIT: I will Close this poll at 500 voters.

EDIT 2: Thank you everyone. I hope this poll help ROBLOX to improve their new avatar.

  • Favorable
  • Unfavorable

0 voters

20 Likes

Maintaining the aesthetic is important. We can make super high detail and awesome games with the cool low poly roblox style.

This won’t work because it’ll look terrible in that type of game, and betrays the roblox feel. To make games look good with it too, they must match it’s poly-level, dramatically adding to dev time if you want to use the avatar model.

It won’t work…

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[Content Deleted]

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What was the audience like at rdc when these were announced btw? Were they happy or not?

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They were completely silent.

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That doesn’t sound good.

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It was very silent, some even laughing.

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YEAAAAH FURRE- * reads post body * Ah, uh, urm, erm… I mean booo bad update…

/joke


All joking aside, I have mixed feelings about this, it ruins the roblox aethestics of being blocky… However I do welcome the more human looking quality of the idea, I’m starting to see more and more people wanting to develop human looking characters on ROBLOX for their games and do welcome people who want to move from the blocky aesthetics of ROBLOX and follow a more realistic (or stylized) approach for their games and/or projects. I myself am found of the animal peeps like @MrgamesNwatch is, and have the similiar concerns that MrgamesNwatch has about how creepy they would look in a normal ROBLOX game where everything is blocky and all that.

However I will say this, as much as I love the idea of being able to create more human looking characters, I do not believe this fits the ROBLOX aesthetics, I mean like… there’s nothing blocky there about it.

Plsdontopenme

Though I wouldn’t mind being hired by some peeps to make them models of furries if this actually happens ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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Realistic proportions don’t automatically count as good character design. The uncanny valley level is a little too much. The face and body just don’t read well at all to me, even separate from each other.

I feel like Roblox should focus more on creating charming designs instead of trying to go for realistic humanoids.

There’s also the fact that they’re still segmented, separate, unbending parts. Without vertex deformation I just feel like this type of model will look even more off.

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I thought I was playing Roblox not Sims?

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Some of the features were applauded as soon as they were announced, but as others mentioned the audience was pretty silent, so I assume not. The questions at the end were “why didn’t you do x” instead of “how can we take advantage of this?”.

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This is a well done concept and a neat idea. But I think it goes against what ROBLOX is. It was always known as the blocky game.

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Don’t make it as an accessible character, make it a model, endorsed model.

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not again
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safe to say unless they drastically improve it, it’s probably not going to happen

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This feature is such a bad idea that it doesn’t deserve a response other than a meme

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