Face Recorder Studio [Beta]

[Update] September 12, 2022


Hi Developers!

We have been busy recently making a variety of improvements to the Animation Editor in Studio, from releasing the Curve Editor to introducing Bone Selection. Today, we are very excited to announce another new feature: Face Recorder in the Animation Editor.

Earlier this summer we announced the full release of Dynamic Heads, which allows using FaceControls and face animations to make Avatar Heads come to life. Previously, the best way to animate a Dynamic Head was either by manually setting values to each FACS pose per track or using facial sliders in the Face Animation Editor to create and save unique expressions on the timeline.

This new feature allows you to use your webcam to puppeteer an Avatar with a Dynamic Head in Studio: crack a smile, rock your head side to side, or wink, and the Avatar will follow your facial movements. Record your facial movements and we’ll process the keyframes in the Animation Editor

For detailed instructions on how to use this feature, see the Animation Capture - Face Documentation.

The above example shows the video recording overlaid to show the side-by-side, but when you use the feature, the original video is not saved and is not shown in Studio

Once you’ve recorded yourself, the keyframes will write to the Animation Editor, where you can tweak the values and edit the animation just like you would with any other animation. Also, keep in mind that this is in beta, and is slowly rolling out. Because of this, you might not have access to this feature just yet.

We’re looking forward to seeing what kinds of facial animations you all make with Face Recorder!

Big thanks to @singing_sushi @tommosaur @wengawenga @SooperDouper @pixgenerator @doble_vee and @BloxSoMeta for all their great work on this.

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Glad to see this is out! This is such a great addition to roblox and I cannot wait for the full release! This is super exciting! :smiley:

When is full release?

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This is insane

Realistic characters are actually starting to look good in Roblox

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Another big W for roblox! Thank you for this amazing update.

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Looks cool, it’ll be interesting to see what other developers do with this :+1:

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I love it, it is an amazing addition just like the live recorder! This would be such a good benefit for game development and for the roblox platform.

13 Likes

This would be good with voice chat and first person, great feature roblox!

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Any plans (to possibility) to make this a thing we can do in real time in a game? I.E. talking to someone with voice chat with facial expressions.

16 Likes

This is a really awesome change, but I’m worried for the privacy side of things - there’s no mention of which data is stored if any, and how it’s used. Could this please be clarified upon?

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It’s a bit uncanny but it’s cool tech, does it move the hit box with the head

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Even though I don’t personally like it, I think this is an extraordinary addition to Roblox and I’m sure many developers are going to enjoy implementing this in their games.

Looks like the metaverse is growing bigtime.

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Roblox out here giving us the tools to develop our own concerts, such a W feature! :clap:

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I kinda like it not gonna lie I thought this was gonna be bad but it looks great.

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I think the same thing from live animations applies here as it is the same process.

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I think this and the live animations update is great but now even more easy for people to break the ToS. Also these updates however are very useful and great might kill off the animation communities a bit cuz of how easy it is to make animations now.

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After the negative feedback when facial animations were first announced, I’m glad you guys are still working on this feature. I’m sure it’ll turn out great.

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Working on a large story-based game that will have cutscenes. This will be insanely useful and I hope we get access to it soon!

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This is really good to show and display emotions , I can finally use this to show more expressions in a character.

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This is really cool! I’m just scared, will this make it so other games that don’t want to use the new technology will be forced to? Because many games like the original style.

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