How to properly do accessories for characters customisation!

Introduction


Hey everyone !

Today, i’m going to show you how to properly create and do an accessory step by step to entirely customise your characters !

I decided to do this tutorial because, a lot of beginners developers are wondering how to do it and ask me for help, and currently there is no tutorial about it so… let’s start !

Step 1 - Create the accessory


In case if you not already have a dummy character, here is the file for the R6 classic roblox character.
R6 Character.rbxl (29,7 Ko)

  • Add an “Accessory” into the workspace
  • Add a “Part” into the accessory and change his properties:
    Name: “Handle”
    Transparency: 1
    Size: (0.5, 0.5, 0.5)
    Cast Shadows: False
    Locked: True
    Can Collide: False
    Anchored: False

Here you go

Step 2 - Attachments


Alright so, this is an important part of the accessory creation… the attachments.

  • First, let’s check out the body parts of your character, each bodyparts should already contain an attachment.
    In my case (the character you probably downloaded at step 1), there is no attachments, so we need to create one.

  • Add an “Attachment” in the body part of your choice and rename it how you want, the name need to be unique, there shouldn’t be multiple attachment with the same name anywhere in any bodypart of your character.

  • The attachment your using/creating in a body part will be where the accessory will be automaticaly placed.
    So if your using a attachment that is in the left leg for example, the accessory will be placed on the left leg.

  • Once you created/choosed the attachment of the bodypart of your choice, you can duplicate it (Ctrl + D), and put the duplicated attachment into the “Handle” part of your accessory.

  • Now, let’s put the accessory into the character and hop^… the accessory should be automaticaly replaced at your attachment position.

  • From here, 2 new object were automaticaly created into the “Handle” part, “OriginalSize” and “AccessoryWeld”.
    The original size is the original size of the “Handle” part.
    The AccessoryWeld is the object that make your accessory get weld to the bodypart.
    You don’t need to change anything, don’t deleted them tho.

  • When the accessory is in the workspace, a “TouchInterest” object can be automaticaly be added into the Handle part.
    This is the object that allow the accessory to be automaticaly moved into a character when someone is walking on it.

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Step 3 - Decorative (Part/Meshes) & Welds


This is the final step of the accessory creation !
Once your accessory is in the character model, and the “Handle” part get automaticaly placed to it’s attachment position, you can start doing the decorative parts !

Before starting, you need to download this plugin if you not already have it.
Weld - Roblox

  • First, add a “Folder” into your “Handle” part, rename it however you want. This is where you will put all your decorative parts and meshes.

  • From here, you can start to import your meshes or create decorative parts and place them correctly how they need to be on the current character bodypart.
    All decorative meshes and parts must to be Can Collide and Anchored to False
    Example: if you choosed the Head body part, you can place your hairs, helmet ect…

  • Once you placed all your decorations correctly, here come the time to weld everything !
    Select the “Handle” part of your accessory, then hold press the “Crtl” keyboard button and select all your decorative parts/meshes.
    When everythings selected, go into the “Plugin” tab, then click the “Weld All” button.
    This is welding all sellected parts together without changing their position and rotation like the classic weld object do.

Well done, you finished the tutorial !
From here, you can move your accessory from the character to the workspace then re move it into the character, to check if everything work correctly.

Here is the Roblox Studio file where i’ve made the tutorial accessory, it maybe can help you to better understand.

Accessory.rbxl (32,4 Ko)

Performances


Having too much parts or meshes in your accessories can decrease the game performances while moving as there is too much objects movements at same time.
So take care to don’t put too much parts or meshes into your accessories.

In case if you’re doing your accessories using lot of parts, i recomend to select all parts of the same color then “Right mouse click” and “Export Selection” from studio to your computer, then re-import it in the studio as a “Mesh Part”.
So you’re going to have only one mesh instead of multiple parts which can avoid to decrease performance when your character is moving.

Conclusion


Creating accessories can be usefull in most of popular games type like shooter games, Mmo rpg games and more.
It allow you to fully customise your characters how you want.
It also is usefull in programming part, as you only need to remove, clone and put accessories in your character which allow you to update your character skin in real time.

13 Likes

You should never put parts in a part. An issue in Roblox exists in which a part will unrender or cull when it is inside another.

Additionally, accessories should not be more than one part. Always use meshes for improved performance and flexibility.

3 Likes

Yeah i know about parts in part, but the weld not work when the parts or meshes are directly in the accessory, even if they are in a folder or a model.

I totaly disagree about the fact we should put no more than one mesh in a accessory…
A lot of modeler dont do textures with meshes, so most of the time while modeling something, they are separating the model into multiples meshes, one for each different color the final model have.

Also there is some good games that are doing this for accessories, like dungeons quest for their helms, armors and skins as an example.

About performances, of course your character can be laggy while moving when there is hundred of parts or meshes in accessories, i forgot to tell it in the tutorial.
As long as you don’t have that much parts or meshes in each accessory, it don’t decrease the performances at all.

Thanks you for your reply, i’m going to edit it and find a solution about parts in parts.

Actually, dungeon quest does not do this. They use meshes.

That’s incorrect. You’re increasing the number of instances to be simulated by physics and increasing the number of rendered triangles.

I don’t see this happen quite often.

They’re using multiple meshes into one accessory.

Performances aren’t that much decreased as long as there is not too much parts or meshes.

I currently have a realy bad computer, i literaly can’t run any roblox game above 30 - 40 fps (at low graphic quality) unless they are very well optimised so i know what i mean.
If the game work well, is good optimised and has good performances on my computer, then 95% of all roblox players can run it very well too on any device.
Even most of mobile devices are more powerfull than my computer lol.

A long time ago, i was mading “Minecraft” skins in R6 character using 6 accessories (one for each bodypart) and a lot of parts, there was around 200 to 400 parts in totals.
The character was super laggy while moving, and while i was doing animations in the editor.
So i tried to convert all parts of the same color into a mesh, so the total part amount was reduced from 200-400 to 12 - 18 meshes.
From here, all lags has dispearing. With or without the 6 accessories that contain 2 to 3 meshpart inside them, the performances / fps was exactly same which mean performances aren’t really decreasing as long as the number of parts or mesh isn’t too hight.

I’m friends with some experienced modeler, and i can tell you they all are doing that.
One is a contributor of dungeon quest (mostly doing swords and staffs), One is the modeler of “Pet Swarm sim” and “Carnival Tycoon” and they aren’t using texure on meshes.
Anyway you can just see by yourself, most of popular games models are meshes using plastic, smooth plastic or neon matérial and using “brickcolor” and not textures.

My manager used to model for them. They don’t.