Introducing the "Avatar Evolution" Studio Beta Build!

I can’t believe some of the things I’ve seen so far, this is mass improvement!

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I would really appreciate any sort of rough date parts of this build will be in production.

I have a big new game in development that will be able to take big advantage of mesh deformation and it would be great to be able to showcase the technology on release.

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I agree with this. I have halted development on a project of mine due to this. I would also like to see mesh deformation launched soon. I hope we can get some rough expected release dates soon.

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Skinning will probably release by sometime Q1, e.g. by the end of March. No promises except that it will come out eventually. Could take longer.

I would not recommend halting development of anything for this. I’d recommend trying to produce the skinned content and try it in AvatarEvolution. That’s what it’s here for! Get a sense for if it works for you and how much it’s worth to you.

If it works there it should work when skinned mesh rendering hits production too. If something doesn’t work you can report bugs to us and we can fix them before it comes out.

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Does Q1 go for everything in the build or just skinning?

Side note: Will we get a 2020 roadmap?

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Just skinning and Bones. Most of the other stuff will take longer.

Probably won’t get a solid 2020 roadmap that’s anything beyond a list of features without dates attached. Estimating software production in general is hard. And priorities shift constantly on top of that. We sometimes implement things and then realize it’s the wrong approach and we need to start over. That happened with skinning earlier last year! That significantly delayed its release, but it’s better off for it in its current form. I can name a few other projects that went similarly at Roblox.

The fact that we’re a platform company that “takes the long view” makes everything harder. If we’re not confident we can support it for 10 years we shouldn’t ship it. Quality or schedule, choose one.

Posts above are a good example of why we need to be careful about setting expectations. We don’t want people making bets on things that might never ship. In a lot of cases we’d love to tell you when things will ship, but the truth is we usually don’t know ourselves until it’s out.

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I’m encountering an issue.

  • I want to make this dynamic lighting flashlight shiny
  • Metal is not nearly rough enough, looks like solid gold
  • SurfaceAppearance overrides the mesh’s texture and makes it a solid color
  • This tool is supposed to change textures when you click
  • ColorMap can’t be scripted because SurfaceAppearances can’t, which I understand why.

Could it be made so there’s a way for SurfaceAppearances to take on the underlying texture, or is that like not possible with the way they work under the hood?
Also, I hope NormalMaps not working on some meshes is fixed soon enough, I made an awesome normalmap for this key model i found but it didn’t work (still looked cool and shiny though)

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I cant wait to make my own textures and I no longer have to use unions and parts! when will it come out

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Hello, i just got an issue, the file is not compatible with 32 bits devices. And my laptop is 32 bits, i hope this gets solved :+1:

Will we be able to deform parts and not only meshes? If so, there are even more possibilities! I’m imagining some cool vertex deformation terrain. I hope vertex deformation gets implemented with this! Thanks! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Parts are just cube meshes. Also AFAIK the object in question would require a bone structure and vertex groups to deform. If you want to just make terrain out of meshes. Use Blender, or any other mesh software.

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This sounds great, I’ll definitely be using this for animating!

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Same! Also creating much more interesting models and in depth models for my games.

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I’ve spotted SurfaceAppearance in release Roblox the other day, and although it’s only parentable to MeshParts and seemlingly does nothing, I’ve noticed that this is new…image

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where you get that from or it from officially roblox or it in beta only?

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Insert a MeshPart in release Roblox studio and click on the + that opens another type of insert menu, search for “SurfaceAppearance”

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uh it not there ;-; I thought it in officially release…

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image
odd, i’m running roblox straight from the start menu

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also I check but there dont have AlphaMode in SurfaceAppearance…

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What? I said nothing about an AlphaMode in the beta build. I’m saying that i found a non-functioning surfaceappearance in release roblox with this new option.

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