The Avatar Setup tool allows you to auto-setup avatar meshes, preview animations, clothing, skin tones, and test avatar character bodies directly in Studio. Marketplace creators can also begin the uploading and validation process from this tool to quickly publish their assets.
Avatar Auto-Setup
The auto-setup feature converts a body model into a finished avatar model with all the advanced components that allow characters to interact with the world and express themselves.
Creating these avatar components, including tasks like rigging, skinning, facial animation, and more, often require hours or days to configure in a third-party modeling tool such as Blender or Maya. Using the Avatar auto-setup tool, you can input a simple character model and create a Marketplace-ready avatar model within minutes.
Auto-setup performs the following on a submitted character model:
- Rigging — If an existing compatible rig isn't present, adds an R15 armature to your body model to enable movement and animation.
- Skinning — Adds weights and influences to various surfaces of your mesh, ensuring an organic and natural flexibility during movement.
- Facial animation — Generates the FACS poses, facial rigging, skinning, and animation data required for facial animation and avatar chat.
- Caging — Adds the outer cage mesh to your avatar, enabling it to wear layered clothing.
- Partitioning — Separates the body mesh into the appropriate R15 parts.
- Creating attachments — Adds the appropriate attachment points enabling the character to wear rigid accessories.
How Auto-Setup Works
The auto-setup tool utilizes machine learning (ML) models that handles the rigging, skinning, and caging application. After creating the rigging, skinning, and caging data, the tool applies body partitioning and attachment point generation using a geometry-based solution. If existing non-rig components, such as cages, attachments, or animation, are already included in the imported Model, the auto-setup tool removes them and generates new components. If the model includes a compatible R15 rig, the tool preserves the rigging and skinning data and does not overwrite this data.
The ML models train on a dataset consisting of hundreds of different body shapes and styles. The tool performs best with human-like body models that are similar to those used for training and becomes more inconsistent for body models that diverge from the training set.
See the following examples for the types of bodies and styles that work best with auto-setup:
Robots and other characters that use stiff, artificial, and inorganic movement and body styles.
Animals, or other characters that use non-human, or overly exaggerated movements and body styles.
Humanoid characters that use realistic proportions. Some stylization and cartoon elements can still apply.
Roblox intends to continue releasing updated versions of the auto-setup ML models over time. When uploading an avatar body asset, Studio gives you the option to add your input model as part of a dataset for additional training and improvements as well as provide feedback on the quality of the auto-setup output.
Model Requirements
For best results, Avatar auto-setup expects the input body model to follow a specific set of requirements. These requirements may require using a third-party modeling tool to adjust your current character mesh, as they are different from the traditional avatar character requirements. As the auto-setup tool improves, some of these requirements may lift.
Many existing downloadable resources for avatar bodies do not follow the auto-setup requirements below. Existing avatar references may need modification to ensure the asset follows the auto-setup models. See the specific auto-setup references for assets that were created for auto-setup requirements.
The full requirements for the input body model are as follows:
Single or multiple mesh — Auto-setup accepts bodies comprised of 1 or more meshes. If your body includes multiple meshes, the tool automatically recombines all selected meshes as a single mesh, then decimates the combined parts to the appropriate R15 structure.
5 distinct head components — Whether you are using a single or multi-mesh character model, the following head components are required:
- 2 eyes — Heads must include 2 connected eyebags containing half-sphere eyes that do not share any vertices with the head component.
- 3 mouthparts — Heads must include a connected mouthbag that houses the upper teeth, lower teeth, and tongue.
- Each of these mouthparts must be singly connected and not share any vertices with each other or with the head mesh.
Head geometry must not share vertices — Eyeballs, teeth, and tongue must be part of the model without sharing vertices with the body mesh.
(Optional) R15 Rig — If your model already includes a correctly configured R15 rig, auto-setup doesn't generate a new rig and will use the one provided.
_Geo affix — The asset name must end with a "_Geo".
Within triangle budget — The total body mesh resolution must be within 10,742 triangles. Use the following guidance to ensure each part doesn't exceed expected polycounts:
Body Part Grouping Maximum Triangles Maximum Quads Head 4000 2000 Arms 1248 per arm 624 per arm Legs 1248 per leg 624 per arm Torso 1750 875 Total: 10,742 5495 - The setup tool segments and adds caps to the character limbs which may add to your total polycount. If your character model is close to the polycount limit, the additional geometry may cause validation failures.
Humanoid shape — The body must follow a general humanoid shape, with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head.
A-pose or T-Pose — The body should form an upright A-pose or T-Pose.
- Bodies with I-pose may yield lower quality results.
- Ensure that no limbs obscure or overlap each other from the front view.
Negative Z Axis — The body front should face the negative Z axis.
Symmetrical — The body should be left and right symmetrical.
- Asymmetrical bodies may still work on a case-to-case basis. Position the center of the body with the Y-axis to improve the accuracy of the result.
Watertight — Ensure the model is watertight in all regions with the exception of the eyes and mouth. Watertight means that there are no holes in the mesh and no back faces are exposed.
No accessories — Do not include accessories, including face accessories, like hair, eyebrows, beards, and eyelashes.
Distinct neck area — Keep the neck distinct and not merged with the shoulders or upper torso.
Includes texture — Models should include one or more texture maps. If the input body includes multiple textures, the tool bakes the textures to a single map. This applies to PBR textures where the four textures are baked — one for each albedo, normal, metalness and roughness.
Follows Marketplace and Community Policy — The model must conform to Roblox's Marketplace Policy and Community Standards.
Examples of Non-Supported Models
The following are common examples of models that may not yield expected results with auto-setup:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Importing Models
Studio supports .gltf, .fbx, and .obj models using the 3D Importer. If you are exporting your model from a third-party tool, see Export Settings for export configurations.
For an asset that meets all of these model requirements, download one of the following auto-setup templates for your own reference and testing:
A comprehensive .zip folder of an Avatar auto-setup ready character model, including clothing and rigid accessory assets and PBR texture assets.
This auto-setup template is not compatible with the traditional avatar creation workflow.
A comprehensive .zip folder of an Avatar auto-setup ready character model, including the base body and associated PBR textures.
This auto-setup template is not compatible with the traditional avatar creation workflow.
To import the model into Studio:
In Studio, navigate to the Avatar tab and select 3D Importer.
In the file browser, select your model object.
When your model object loads in the 3D Import preview, disable the Upload To Roblox option.
- To save time in the future, click the ... dropdown in the top-right of the 3D Importer window and Save as New to create an import profile for this workflow.
Verify the preview and any warnings or errors in your model object.
- See 3D Importer for additional information. Certain warnings and errors may require readjusting the model in a third-party software.
Select Import to add the Model instance into your workspace.
When a new model is imported, it's also added to the moderation queue. If an avatar asset is moderated incorrectly, you will receive a moderation email with a link to appeal. This appeal takes up to 10 minutes to resolve.
Running Auto-Setup
When your project has the appropriate Model in your workspace, you can begin the auto-setup process.
Select the model in the workspace.
- If you want to select only specific meshes of your model, navigate to the Explorer, expand the Model object, and hold shift and click on the individual mesh objects.
With the Model selected, navigate to the Avatar tab and select Avatar Setup.
In the Avatar Setup panel, click the blue Set Up Avatar button. This process can take several minutes.
Once complete, a Model of your avatar populates in your workspace.
Review any warnings or errors.
- If the body scale falls outside of the Marketplace ranges, the tool rescales the body to match requirements.
- Auto-setup highlights individual body parts that are not passing validation. You can use the scale tool in Studio to try to fix these validation errors. If the body part proportions fall outside of the supported range in Roblox, you may need to use third-party software to rescale the specific body parts.
Use the various Avatar Setup tools to verify the components of your avatar before saving the Model to your Toolbox or uploading to the Marketplace.
Testing Interface
After auto-setup, or when using the tool with an avatar-ready character model, the character populates in the preview window. It's important to test that your avatar components have correctly generated by testing out different clothing, rigid accessories, and animations. If you discover any issues, you may need to update your base input model in your third-party modeling software and/or retry the auto-setup process.
Check Body
The Check Body interface contains tabs for Animations, Clothing, Accessories, and Body assets, such as skin-tone and swapping body parts. Clicking a subtab like Shirts, Waist, or Skin reveals a selection column along the left side of the window for testing various cosmetics and visuals.
Equipping Items
Selected items are equipped on the avatar and are added to the currently equipped column on the right side. Selected animations begin playing as a preview of how they'll look in a running experience.
To unequip an item, click it again in the selection column, press the X button at the top right of the equipped item, or right-click the asset in the Equipped column and select Unequip. You can also drag and order the various equipped accessories to set the worn order.
Adding Items
The add item button allows you to add custom assets to the tool's palette for testing.
To add an item to the palette:
Select a valid Accessory or Body Part asset from the Explorer or 3D workspace.
Click the add item button at the bottom of the selection column along the left side of the window.
The item appears in the appropriate section and subsection of the Check Body interface, such as Accessories → Hair.
Check Face
The Check Face interface zooms into the face and allows you test various facial poses.
Test in Experience
The Test in Experience button starts playtesting the experience with the previewed avatar. Any changes made in the Avatar Setup preview tools, such as equipped clothing or accessories, or modifications, such as skin tone or body part swaps, do not transfer over to the playable character model in this mode.
Publish
The Publish button opens the publish asset dialog, with an option to upload the avatar and any accessory items to the Marketplace
When selecting the Publish option, you can upload the asset to the Marketplace, where you can sell the item paying an upload fee, clearing moderation, and publishing the asset to the catalog.
The upload option opens the following prompt which goes through additional validation checks before uploading to the moderation queue.
For additional resources on the publishing process and Marketplace, see the following: