These are some of the most longstanding asset bugs, and many avatars have this bundle on by default. They’ve been mostly unchanged since their introduction, don’t take advantage of new features like newer bundles, and affect visual consistency in games using the avatar unification adapter. So in this report, I’ll be including a list of the inconsistencies and bugs that the R15 blocky bundle has. I will post a separate report for layered clothing issues.
Smooth Shading
R6:
R15:
Explanation: R6 has smooth shading on its bevels, while R15 uses flat shading. This causes R15 to look sharp in comparison to R6.
Expected Behavior: R15 should have smooth shading on its edges.
Joint Separation
R6:
R15:
Explanation: R6 separates only at the joints between the arms, legs, torso and head, while R15 uses antequated joint separation to prevent visual issues. This used to be a technical limitation.
Expected Behavior: Now that skinned meshes are released and utilized by many bundles (including ones meant to emulate the original R6 separation behavior with R15 rigging), it would now be possible to remove these separations between joints and only keep the original visual separation between the legs, torso, arms, and head.
Bevel Inconsistencies
R6:
R15:
Explanation: R15 utilizes both tri and quad bevels, while R6 only uses triangular bevels. R15 also has bevels of different angles than R6.
Expected Behavior: For visual consistency, R15’s bevels should be the same as R6’s bevels.
Inconsistent Arm Proportions
Explanation: The arms are too short and low by 0.047 studs, making the shoulders “sag” compared to the R6 version. All other proportions are fine, however.
Expected Behavior: The arms should be lengthened by 0.047 studs and moved up by that amount.
3 Likes
Unfortunately I doubt any of this will get changed, because there are probably a lot of people that rely on the rig looking like this. The original R15 rig was created in 2016, so it’s just been way too long for any significant visual changes to be made.
I also personally prefer the sharp bevels and the separated hands/feet/torso, but that’s just me.
The lower shoulders happened around May 2018 when they had to update the rig to squish the elbow/knee joints in order to add support for Rthro scaling.
Previously, the elbows/knees would clip through each other if you tried to scale the rig to a tall height. Since skinned meshes weren’t possible yet, they were forced to squish the joints, which used to be nicely rounded off:
I have no idea why the shoulders were lowered in the process, but again, it’s probably way too late to do anything now. I’ve also gotten used to it over the years.
However, in regards to the elbows/knees being squished, it would be nice if this was fixed with skinned meshes, to make the rig appear similar to the original 2016 version, while also still being able to scale to any height. But yet again, I don’t think Roblox would want to many any visual changes to the default avatar rig that people have relied on for years.
Luckily, all of these issues can be solved with UGC. The modesty layers are annoying, but that’s an entirely separate issue that I really hope Roblox will solve someday.
Then again Roblox doesn’t seem to mind updating old avatars (i.e. updating things that people have relied on for years in their avatars) without asking - remember when they updated user avatars with dynamic heads automatically and converted them to R15?
But I’m also not in support of those automatic avatar changes (they’ve affected and served to annoy me as well), so maybe it could be an official Roblox bundle on the catalog that emulates the existing r6 look and feel and fixes the bugs listed here should players or developers want to use them.
To be fair, forcefully equipping a Dynamic Head and switching the avatar type to R15 isn’t “replacing” anything. Not to say I agreed with that decision (especially with them making certain Classic Faces unobtainable), but affected users could always just take off the head and switch back to R6.
If they updated the default R15 rig then this would affect everyone who relies on it, with no way for them to revert back to the old look.
Releasing a free R6-esque avatar bundle and animation pack feels like a good compromise, but I also kinda doubt Roblox would be willing to do this. Maybe if R6 is ever officially sunset then they’ll consider, otherwise UGC will probably end up leading the way. People also have different preferences when it comes to blocky avatars (some people like rigid limbs, some people like bendy ones, some people like having hands/feet, etc.)
I think R6 is bound to be sunset with the whole avatar unification thing, but otherwise i agree
