Facial Animation, formally known as Dynamic Heads, is now released and out of beta! Developers can publish experiences with avatars containing dynamic heads – ie, Meshparts with associated FaceControls and face animations.
With this, the full release of Automatic Skinning Transfer is here as well. Find out more here: Link
So, what does this mean?
It means that any developer can use Facial Animation in their live experiences, not just in Studio. Therefore, you could:
Add Facial Animation to your in-experience avatar editor.
Use Facial Animations for your NPCs.
Retrofit in-experience emotes and animations to include a face component.
Cool stuff with animated characters we haven’t thought about!
As a reminder, we have released documentation to help with:
While Facial Animation was in beta we ran performance tests to ensure that feature did not materially affect the performance of any live experience. We are constantly looking for feedback so let us know if you encounter any issues!
So, what’s next?
We are planning to begin releasing this on the Avatar Shop later this year. This means that players can start entering your experience with a Dynamic Head that can animate through emotes and animation packs! Feel free to play around ahead of the Catalog release in order to spot any issues or concerns.
Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback!
Awesome to see this feature fully released now! I am excited to see how this can be used in games!
In the past Roblox has shown dynamic heads with classic 2D faces retrofitted to work with the feature. I’m curious to know, are there plans to adapt every pre-existing face to be compatible in the same way? I would love to be able to do so with all of the faces I have collected over the years. Excited to hear and see more about this feature in the future
When I first read about the Roblox acquisition of Loom.ai, I thought it would flop like Rthro. But, there’s definitely potential for this new technology!
Now we can finally animate cinematics without a static face staring at you all the time
Is the Real-Time Face Detection project also going to be released sometime into the face animator? It would be really efficient if we can just record ourselves in the camera and let Roblox handle the animation work.
Happy to see that this feature is now fully released! I’m excited to see what type of games will use this feature! Can’t wait for its release on the avatar shop soon!
Very cool looking feature! Roblox is really getting improved fastly.
A quick question, is the facial expressions are connected to voice chat, camera or something else? If it’s with voice chat, what will happen to people who don’t use voice chat?
Yeah, same problem here. I’m trying to use this new feature but I cannot see the face so I don’t know what i’m doing. An opacity scroller would be useful.
I am excited to see Dynamic Heads in experiences! I think it will help in providing a bit more realism and immersion for experiences. Is there a timeline on when this feature will integrate with voice/video for accurate real world expressions when speaking? (I assume this is far out)
As much as I am not a fan of Rthro, I have to say, adding features such as this to allow for more customizable and realistic games is great! While I may not use this anytime soon, it will be great to see other developers that want to use this take advantage of this for their projects!
