I’m wondering if a rig with a higher joint count is on the roadmap.
As a hobby, I sometimes model Roblox characters myself, and I’ve run into a lot of challenges with the current joint system.
Just like how R15 was a step up from R6, I think it’s time we add a version with even more joints
…maybe something like
R89!
For the arm joints, a total of 8 are needed (left/right)
Each arm requires 2 deform bones (upper/lower) for physical collision and 2 twist bones (upper/lower)
A real human arm deforms gradually across the entire arm.
The leg joints also need a total of 8.
For arms, 2 shoulder joints are needed.
Without shoulder joints, the UpperArm bone ends up moving all the way into the shoulder, which looks really awkward.
That’s not a big issue for blocky Roblox characters, but it becomes really noticeable as characters get more humanoid.
Even trying to disguise this visually was extremely difficult.
For the torso, it seems 2 joints are needed in the UpperTorso (Upper Chest / Chest), and 2 in the LowerTorso (Spine / Hip)
The head should also be split into 3: LowerNeck, UpperNeck, and Head.
Roblox also recently added a VR-specific HandRigDescription. Any plans to support fingers too?
There are talented animators on X who create block-style fingers to make more dynamic animations.
It would be great if finger joints could be officially added as an optional opt-in part of the bundle.
Each finger would need 3 joints (including the thumb).
Including the wrists, that brings it to 32 joints in total.
Also, each foot should be composed of 2 bones, making 4 in total.
You can lift just the front or back of the foot when standing, but with only 1 joint currently, tiptoe poses aren’t possible.
Having toe joints would also be great, though that might be excessive, so I’ll leave that as a suggestion.
If added, the big toe would need 2 segments, and the rest 3 segments each, totaling 28 joints.
The total number of joints I’m proposing for the character is:
8 (Arm) + 8 (Leg) + 2 (Shoulder) + 2 (UpperTorso) + 2 (LowerTorso) + 3 (Head) + 32 (Hand) + 4 (Foot)
That makes about 61 bones in total, which could be called R61.
Or if you include the toes, it becomes 61 + 28 = R89.
If the large number of joints is a concern,
then helper bones like twist or support bones could just be Bone Instances,
and only the ones that directly control position and rotation would be separated into parts and physically animated using Motor6D or AnimationConstraint.
That would reduce the physical computation cost.
(Even Dynamic Head has a lot of bones, but since they’re internally bones and not physically animated, the number of bones itself doesn’t really matter that much.)
For fingers, only the top-most joint would use a Motor6D for the part, and the lower segments would be just bones for rendering
In this case, the number of parts would be:
4 (Arm) + 4 (Leg) + 2 (UpperTorso) + 2 (LowerTorso) + 2 (Head/Neck) + 12 (Hand) + 2 (Foot)
→ making it R28, or R38 (with toe parts)
Alternatively, you could fix the number of Motor6Ds and let users freely add bones—kind of like how DynamicHead works.
I’m wondering if a rig with a higher joint count like this is on the roadmap.
It feels kind of contradictory to talk about building the metaverse while still sticking with just 15 joints.
Blocky characters can kind of get away with visual tricks,
but the closer a character looks to a real human, the more obvious and jarring the 15-joint limit feels.
Even with bundles that mix blocky and semi-realistic styles, not just the fully human-like “Rthro”, having more joints would make them look much cooler!
