This feature is only applicable to developers who manage an active experience with R6 avatar characters enabled.
The R6 to R15 Adapter allows R15 avatars to join your R6 experience. All avatars in the experience will still use the R6-like scale and movement systems. The adapter allows your experience to take advantage of modern R15 components, such as layered clothing and animatable heads, with minimal performance or gameplay impact to your experience.
It's important to understand how the adapter uses adapter parts and review the feature's known limitations before enabling and testing the adapter for your experience.
Adapter Parts
The R6 to R15 Adapter implements a Lua-script injection when an avatar spawns that creates adapter parts.
These are invisible MeshParts that have the exact same name as R6 body parts and are welded to their corresponding R15 body parts. The scripts allow adapter parts to accept R6-based script interactions and forward them to the appropriate R15 parts.
The adapter parts perform the following:
- Emulates R6 physics using extra invisible collideable parts with the positions and dimensions of R6 hitboxes.
- Sets the visible R15 body parts as non-collideable.
- Scales and positions the visible R15 parts to match the R6 size and joint positions.
- Acts as a shim between R6 and R15 body parts. Property changes applied to the invisible R6 parts are passed along to their corresponding visible R15 parts.
- For example, a color change in R6 LeftArm is passed to the R15 LeftUpperArm, LeftLowerArm and LeftHand parts.
Enabling the R6 to R15 Adapter
You can enable the R6 to R15 Adapter by setting the Workspace.AvatarUnificationMode property in Workspace. You can only access this property if Avatar Type is set to R6 in your Game Settings. At this time, the Default setting disables the AvatarUnificationMode.
To enable the R6 to R15 Adapter:
- In the Explorer, navigate to Workspace.
- In the Properties window, set AvatarUnificationMode to Enabled.
Known Limitations
In a majority of cases, the R6 to R15 Adapter works out-of-the-box with the systems of a R6 experience. In rare cases, there may be conflicts with custom systems that handle game security, or character-related behavior. See the following for a list of potential limitations or conflicts that you may encounter when using the R6 to R15 Adapter.
Game Security
Some R6 experiences with active cheat detection can interpret the Lua-script injection as an attempt to circumvent the security.
Since the default behavior of R6 avatars is to spawn with all their parts already in place, many experiences tend to flag changes in body parts as potential exploits. In experiences with the adapter enabled, the R15 avatars spawn with their default bodies before changing body parts based on their saved avatar body parts and accessories.
Custom Avatar Editors
Experiences with custom avatar editors that allow players to swap body parts might break the connection with the adapter parts.
Pre-existing R15 Support
Experiences that check the avatar rig type and include solutions specific for each R15 and R6 case might not work properly with the adapter. AvatarUnificationMode uses code paths corresponding to R15 which may require testing in your experience.
Body Part Rescaling
Games that resize the R6 body parts won't see the scale change propagated to the proxied R15 parts. This is also the case if joint attachments are moved.
GetChildren API Calls
GetChildren() calls return both the R6 proxy parts and their corresponding R15 parts. You may need to account for this extra information.
FindFirstChild API Calls
Don't immediately use FindFirstChild(), or "dot indexing," in your scripts to find character parts. Instead, use WaitForChild() before you call FindFirstChild(). Replication in AvatarUnificationMode is different, and the experience may fail to find a child that doesn't exist yet.
This has always been a best practice for Roblox scripts, even if some cases work without following this practice.
Head.ClassName Conditionals
AvatarUnificationMode sets the Head to a MeshPart. Any calls that read or write to the SpecialMesh.MeshId property will fail.
Head Collisions
R15 characters joining an R6 experience don't support collisions with their Head part. If your game detects or depends on collisions with a character's Head, you must also update your scripts to check for CollisionHead as well.