As a roblox developer, it is currently incredibly difficult to create custom player models. I created a custom Military Marine for a game I’m working on. I wanted him to be R15, with a custom mesh that I made from scratch (with a tool called Fuse.) Here’s what he looks like in ROBLOX.
It’s ugly because the parts of his body come apart. I think it would be a lot more user-friendly and effective to put actual armature and mesh deformation onto the humanoid. After all, the players for R15 and R15 Anthro already have everything set up so there appears to be an armature, when in fact there is not. Armature could also be used for building roads, and I have mentioned in my other post:
curves
Armature would be a highly effective addition to ROBLOX, and I think it will push the possibilities farther than before. The Blocky aesthetic everyone wants to preserve will always be there; at this point it is tough to get rid of. After all, 99% of people who make games on roblox won’t change the character - history has proved that. This same mesh is rigged with an armature I applied in Blender, and if that could be imported then that would be amazing. Thanks!
Notice how the pieces don’t come apart like in the roblox gif; instead they stretch to conform to the shape of the bones (like what you’d expect in real life.) I don’t know of any game engines that don’t have armature to some extent
IIRC reason given was that it wasn’t compatible with UGC. Normally models are carefully crafted to deform the right way, so it’s even more difficult to do that dynamically and have it magically work when different assets are stitched together. How would modelers determine which part of each asset should be stitched to other assets?
The feature that’s asked for is known as Vertex deformation and used in pretty much most 3D game engines unless very old ones like on some classic Nintendo DS and PS1 era games.
The only reason to not feature any sort of vertex/mesh deformation is due to performance reasons/problems .
Tough its a quite well known fact that even the oldest phones that are capable of running Roblox are usually far more significantly stronger in terms of Hardware than a Play Station 1 or an old Nintendo DS handheld console.
I say that since some Roblox devsl on Twitter Claim that some Roblox admins replied to similar feature requests with some answers like : " Vertex deformation is currently not possible due to performance issues with mobile devices"
So here’s my detailed answer and reaction to that . Did anybody here ever actually noticed that Roblox does already feature full vertex/mesh deformation ?
Now some may wonder … " WAIT ::WHAT?!"
Well here’s the ´surprise :
What you see on this picture is nothing else than a plane white untextured ; dull shaded mesh deformated by most likely some sort of vertex deformation.
This plane white mesh is also known as the new Beam feature but its texture just hasn’t loaded yet thanks to my potato quality internet connection
Now to answer the question does Vertex deformation really cause any notable peformance problem on mobile devices ?
well i cant answer that for sure … i could indeed create a place with several thousand different bending beams and invite ppl who own low end phones to test how it performs … but iam currently quite too busy to do this job/test that Roblox interns could and or should do.
I don’t see mobile performance being a good reason not to include it as most mobile games already have this kind of deformation and have had it for years.
It’s not always mobile though, Xbox has pretty low performance too. It’s either a ‘performance’ issue or other things need to be prioritized (usually both).
btw indeed their would still remain quite some problems and disadvantages for example :
-Roblox player models are actually supposed to be made of separate parts in order to “mix and match” the parts of the packages ; now even especially since the Roblox toys arrived which encourage even real world Roblox package body part "mix and match.
Which X-box tough ? i tought Roblox does only have support for the newer X-box consoles ? in this case those consoles are far stronger than most Roblox player’s pcs and laptops.
And anyways even the older X-box consoles had full Vertex deformation support and nobody ever mentioned any problem cause by games that used the feature … if there was even ever any Xbox 3D game that didnt used Vertex deformation techniques.
My full point is ; all consoles ;devices ; pretty much any hardware which supports vertex deformation is usually capable of handling notable more demanding 3D games than most average Roblox games.
thats pretty much all i got to say about this topic … even while i am typing Roblox is working on implementing new updates like the new Future is bright lighting engine.
Those new graphics usually only run on quite notable GPUS and any gpu capable of running those new graphics update is usually more than strong enough to handle tons of real time vertex deformation… so or so Roblox players slowly and finally need to upgrade their hardware and devices.
Performance is not the reason. Rome Total War ran on 2005 standard laptops no problem with over 2,000 units. 200 vertex-deformed actors would be even more feasible.
I’ve been asking for this feature since user uploaded meshes were first introduced. Literally every 3D engine I can think of supports armatures in meshes. The Roblox engine is advancing to the point where it really can’t evolve much more until we introduce features missing from the engine - features that you see in 99% of other engines that are missing in Roblox. This feature should definitely be implemented.
I seriously hope we get mesh armature / vertex deformation support. This would bring the engine to a whole new level.
And performance isn’t as big of a concern as one might think. My potato laptop with 2GB RAM with an AMD E2 RADEON cpu was able to run “Command and conquer” just fine.
Please. We. NEED. THIS.
EDIT : It would also be nice to have the ability to import keyframe animations made in blender and play them on the corresponding armatures in the meshes that the animations were made for.
Off topic:
It’s so hard remembering to type “Roblox” and not “ROBLOX”
I would love to have this just as much as anyone else, but there are concerns other than performance.
Here are two big ones I thought of right off the top of my head:
How would physics be handled? Would new hulls be re-generated for meshes on the fly? No physics? Both of these sound like bad options to me.
How would attachments behave? A humanoid rig with some hats welded using attachments and their positions would look extremely awkward in many cases. Would attachments deform in the same way the mesh does, and if so, where on the mesh are they “attached”? This also applies for motor/welds/similar.
The technique itself to deform meshes is not the problem; how mesh deformation would affect other features is.
