Which Animation Features Would You Like to See on Roblox?

Help and Feedback Creations Feedback
, ,
#1

Hi Roblox Developers,

I’m a Roblox engineer working on animation systems and inverse kinematics. I’m reaching out to you to gather insights into the animation features you’d most like to see implemented on Roblox. Whether it’s improvements to existing features, entirely new tools, or enhancements to the animation creation process and runtime, we want to hear from you.

Here are a few possible points of discussion:

  • What new animation features would enable you to bring your creative vision to life more effectively?
  • Are there any specific animation tools or workflows you find cumbersome or inefficient?
  • Are there any particular animation styles or techniques you feel are currently underserved on Roblox?
  • How can we better support collaborative animation projects within the platform?

Feel free to share any thoughts and ideas related to animation. No promises but we’ll see what we can do based on your feedback.

Thank you,
Simone

14 Likes
#2

How about to add something like “Root Motion”?

Will be cool use it in action animations when RootPart moves with animation.

7 Likes
#3

More easing styles and multiple rig compatibility would be nice to have in the default animation editor as not everyone can buy moon animator. To not copy moon animator you guys can just leave out the object animation and just allow more than 1 rigs to be animated.

11 Likes
#4

Definitely fix the animation editor showing unaccurate EasingDirections.

6 Likes
#5

Oh my gosh I’ve just gotten into making cutscenes for my game using Moon Animator and it’s wicked cool but the default animation editor should let you use the Camera in your animations and be able to export the FOV and the CFrame, also I think having other properties of objects be exportable would be MASSIVELY wicked because not even Moon Animator supports that, and also multiple rigs would be amazing and of course some UI customization the user can do!

Just these changes I listed above could be really useful for future story/narrative game creators like myself, and it would be in competition with Monn Animator

Then we can make cool stuff like this :sunglasses:

6 Likes
#6
  1. Be able to animate multiple rigs
  2. Add more EasingStyles and EasingDirections.
  3. Be able to customize animations with graphical view of the animation

I’m so happy that we might finally be getting something cool to the animation editor. I have been developing on roblox for the past 4 years, but AFAIK, there’s not really been any updates to the animation editor other than adding and fixing IK issues.

7 Likes
#7

Resizing bones would be nice. Roblox is the only engine I can think of that has mesh deformation but doesn’t support it.

11 Likes
#8

Sharable animations. Emotes, and animation packs could then be sold on the marketplace. Users are currently creating avatar bundles with limbs that are not correctly weighted to the armature to create poses. Poses should be animation packs, so that they are not disruptive to gameplay, by baking the pose into the character model it makes the bundle incompatible with ALL animations.

8 Likes
#9

Add like a ghost that shows the last frame you made when making a new frame.

6 Likes
#10

A reason why I have not dabbled too much with animations myself is just the sheer incomplete state the whole system feels like.

Creating animations feels extremely limited. Not only just the making of the animations, but the playing of animations? I have to create a new animation instance, input the animation ID that I get after uploading the animation to my inventory, then load the animation in the animation instance I had already made and to finish it off, play it with a function.

It just feels excessive for playing a single animation, let alone a whole library of them. I just wish there was an easier way to play the animations.

How? I don’t know, but this is just my opinion.

My suggestion would be to:

  • Once you upload an animation, you get the animation Instance ready, which acts as the Animation instance with the ID of the animation already loaded.
  • Instead of using the function :LoadAnimation(Animation), use a property on the Instance called Enabled, which if enabled, has the animation pre-loaded, and if disabled, it’s not loaded.
5 Likes
#11

dash or roll, both are pretty cool

3 Likes
#12

An auto-animator for custom characters.
You select the body parts aka rigs and you get to choose either the default R6 anim or the default R15 anim.
I don’t wanna recreate those animations.

2 Likes
#13

UGC R15 Animations. I believe this is a good feature because:

  • It does not require Blender, and instead requires animation abilities.

  • It’s one of the only sections left that do not have UGC.

  • It gives animators a new way to make income than just game contributing and content creating.

Overall, UGC R15 animations give new possibilities for creativity and monetization!

1 Like
#14

Additive animations / blending
Currently animations fight with each other, and whichever animation has the highest weight/priority is the one that’s most “visible”. This isn’t ideal for certain types of animations, and the workarounds are very bloaty.

For example, it is currently difficult to do “flinch” animations. A good flinch animation would impose itself ontop the currently playback state, but that isn’t currently possible with how animations layer and blend. If my character crouches and stands, I now need a flinch animation for both (any) move state(s). Without multiple animations, my character would go from crouching, to standing and flinching, back crouching.

If we had additive animations / blending, I could just make one flinch animation, set it to a high priority, and play it regardless of character/animation state. My character could then visibly remain crouched (or in any state), and then have the flinch animation imposed over it, preserving the original pose.

Public publishing and versions
Animations being bound to the “game owner” has been a pain point with animations for as long as we’ve been able to make them. It makes quickly prototyping difficult, it hinders collaboration with devs/contractors outside of your project, and it forces animation ID to double as a soft version control system.

I wish I could just make an animation public, or give certain groups/users/games access to it. It sucks that I have to re upload them and change ID numbers on objects just to share them in a “working / live” way. I wish I didn’t have to hang on to the keyframesequence objects for every animation I have and could just let people import and play/modify from a single animation ID.

Animations let us publish new versions to the same ID. That new version is, as far as I know, not tied to game/server version, meaning two+ different clients could see too versions of the same animation depending on when they joined the game and when an animation was updated. This isn’t ideal, especially if the animation has some keyframe event or length changes. The only workaround is to create a new animation with a new ID, and then replace all your IDs in your game(s).

I feel like using animations in game/code is in a decent spot. Barring some API, once you have the logistics of creating, publishing, and inserting animations sorted, then using them for gameplay is generally a fine process.

It’s getting to that “I can actually use this animation now” stage that is IMO, super tedious at times. All the work involved in actually being able to use an animation you create poorly contrasts with an asset type that typically benefits from a lot of iteration and ease of use.

10 Likes
#15

I’m mainly looking forward to this 8-year old bug being resolved, as it prevents some implementations of animation blending:

4 Likes
#16

Addressing this would be highly beneficial for improving memory sizes of some animation tracks, as highlighted in the thread.

Additionally, root motion is vastly underrated IMO and would eliminate a lot of pain points for developers, making visual effects and hitboxes way easier to sync with animations.

3 Likes
#17

I’d really like to see automatic and automatic clamped Bezier curves. Not sure what it is but something about the keyframe/graph editor on the default Roblox Animator just feels really cumbersome to use. Maybe the way it’s laid out or something.

2 Likes
#18

Thank you all, your feedback has been noted. It seems there are a few clear areas where you’d like improvements. Keep them coming!

4 Likes
#19

I have a VR headset. It would be awesome to be able to use its motion tracking in combination with IK to use motion capture to record my own animations. That would save a ton of money for a full motion capture suit (especially with the low price of the Quest), and remove a lot of tedium when it comes to making animations as a non-animator. It would be good to have support for multiple trackers like the 3rd-party full-body tracking (slime VR) or attaching it to objects to animate (e.g. Vive trackers).

also, stop working after work hours

5 Likes
#20

How are you suggesting they accomplish this? For example are you saying that the headset would act as the head to a r15 character, and the arms would move with IK in accordance to hand tracking position?

Let me make it clear, I’m not against this idea, I actually support it, but there are quite a few hurdles that need to be jumped before this could ever be a feature. For example, motion capture tech almost ALWAYS has to be cleaned up after the fact as the rough data gained from even the most state-of-the-art MoCap suits is still relatively crude. The problem with this is, if Roblox implemented this feature, there is little to no chance that you would be able to alter this animation yourself after capture (See the video to animation beta), IMO that would render this borderline useless.

Not to mention with just a headset and controllers, the motion that would be recorded would be relatively basic, and only apply on a couple parts of a rig, making it look quite strange. The support of 3rd party full-body tracking could exponentially help this out, but the fact of the matter is, I’m willing to bet that < 1% of Roblox Developers are more likely to either own vive trackers or set up a recording workspace to begin with. This is because in the day, it’s cheaper and easier for developers to either animate themselves, or hire a talented animator to make these simple animations an easy task to complete.

But honestly, it kinda seems like Roblox to develop this random gimmick feature that hardly anyone would be able to use lmao, that’d be hilarious.

(For reference I do own these methods, it’s just I don’t think enough OTHER people have access to these devices in order to make this a worthwhile investment vs. the ease of just making an animation yourself.)

1 Like