Removing descendant AnimationController & Animator from the character model breaks Facial Animation

[EmeraldSlash (Rio)]

Repro steps (in a live server so that Facial Animation is enabled):

1. Turn on camera / facial animation / whatever so that your characters face and neck etc are being animated.
2. Create and parent the following instance hierarchy to the character model: Model → AnimationController → Animator
3. Delete this new model, or reparent it to be outside the character.
4. Observe facial animation turning off / breaking.

Repro file:
facial_animation_bug.rbxl (46.9 KB)
(When testing you should do step 1., then press the “Break Facial Animation” button to do steps 2. and 3., then observe 4.)

[Focia19]

We’ve filed a ticket into our internal database for this issue, and will come back as soon as we have updates!

Thanks for flagging!

[LordMelonTheThird]

We’ve successfully deployed a fix for this. Please let us know if you encounter any further issues.