Animation Editor

The Animation Editor, accessible from Studio's Avatar tab or Window ⟩ Avatar menu, allows you to design and publish custom animations on rigs. A rig is an object with individual sections connected by joints. You can move these joints to create poses and then smoothly animate the rig from pose to pose.

Interface

The editor's window is divided into three primary sections:

Media / Playback ControlsTrack ListTimeline

Animation name.

Media and playback options.

Position indicator which displays the timeline unit for the position of the scrubber in seconds:frames.

Create an animation

You can only create animations using rigs.

1. If you don't already have a rig in the workspace, insert a pre-built rig using the Rig Generator tool. The pre-built rigs have all of the basic parts and mechanisms to build a character animation.

   

2. In the 3D viewport or the Explorer, select the rig.

From here, you can begin creating poses for your rig and modifying the animation settings, such as looping the animation or setting its priority.

Create poses

An animation consists of different poses, or specific positions and orientations of Bone or MeshPart objects within a rig. You can create poses by moving or rotating bones or meshes, such as the rig's hands, feet, or torso. After you create multiple poses on different positions of the timeline, the animation editor runs between them with your easing settings to smoothly animate the rig from pose-to-pose.

For example, a simple animation where a humanoid character turns to look 45° to the left has two poses: The initial position looking forward, and the turned position looking left.

To create a pose:

1. In the Explorer window, select the rig and expand its child instances to access the bones or meshes.

2. In the 3D viewport or Explorer, select a bone or mesh.

3. In the timeline, click-and-move the scrubber to the frame position where you want to set the pose. By default, Roblox represents timeline units as seconds:frames and animations run at 30 frames per second. For example, 0:15 indicates ½ second.

   

   By default, the timeline displays a duration of 1 second (1:00). To add more time to the timeline, enter a new value in the right-side box of the position indicator.

4. Move or rotate the bone or mesh to a new orientation. For bones, you can rotate them to pose the rig along the created bone joints.

   Whenever you adjust a specific bone or mesh, a new track displays in the track list and a new keyframe displays on the timeline for that bone or mesh at that specific frame position.

   

   When creating poses, you can toggle between Move and Rotate modes by pressing R. These modes work exactly like moving and rotating base objects, including the snap settings and incremental values located in Studio's toolbar.

5. When you're ready to preview the animation, click the Play button in the editor's playback controls or press the Spacebar.

Keyframes

Once you create basic poses for a rig, fine-tuning individual keyframes can significantly improve the final animation. You can either:

• Operate on a specific track or keyframe by clicking or right-clicking on that track/keyframe.
• Operate on all tracks by clicking or right-clicking in the upper region of the track list.

Easing

For each keyframe in the animation editor, you can choose both an easing style and an easing direction.

Easing style

Easing style is the rate at which an animation moves between different frame positions within the animation. By default, a part will move and/or rotate from one keyframe to the next in an even, steady motion known as linear easing. In the following video, linear easing makes the character's turning animation appear stiff and robotic.

While that may look appropriate for some motions, compare the following video where cubic easing makes the animation of the character's motion appear more natural.

To change the easing style for one or more keyframes:

1. Select one or more keyframes. Every selected keyframe is now surrounded by a blue border.

2. Right-click on a keyframe with a border. A pop-up menu displays.

3. Hover over Easing Style and choose from the following options:

   • Linear — Moves at a constant speed.
   • Constant — Removes interpolation between the selected keyframe and next keyframe. The animation will "snap" from keyframe to keyframe.
   • CubicV2 — Eases in or out with cubic interpolation.
   • Elastic — Moves as if the object is attached to a rubber band.
   • Bounce — Moves as if the start or end position of the tween is bouncy.

Easing direction

Easing direction defines which end of the animation movement is affected by the easing style. By default, the motion is slower at the beginning and faster toward the end of the animation.

To change the easing direction for one or more keyframes:

1. Select one or more keyframes. Every selected keyframe is now surrounded by a blue border.

2. Right-click on a keyframe with a border. A pop-up menu displays.

3. Hover over Easing Direction and choose from the following options:

   • In — The motion will be slower at the beginning and faster toward the end.
   • Out — The motion will be faster at the beginning and slower toward the end.
   • InOut — In and Out on the same tween, with In at the beginning and Out taking effect halfway through.

Optimize keyframes

Animators can often generate many keyframes during the course of animation, especially when using various animation tools and features. To help reduce the number of unnecessary keyframes and make it easier to animate on the timeline, the animation editor provides tools for automatic and on-demand keyframe optimization.

Automatic

The animation editor automatically detects and removes unnecessary keyframes when creating facial animations and when promoting a keyframe animation to a curve animation.

If 3 or more consecutive keyframes have the same value in a track, the editor removes the intermediary keyframes and keeps only the first and last keyframes.

If the track only contains keyframes with default values, such as an identity coordinate frame, or a 0 value for a curve animation, the entire track is removed from the animation.

On-demand

During animating, you can use the editor's Keyframe Optimization tool to quickly reduce the number of unnecessary keyframes. Keyframe Optimization prioritizes the least impactful keyframes first. You can adjust the number of keyframes using the slider.

While using the slider, you can preview the animation and scrub through the timeline to check your animation but you can not perform editing operations, such as changing keyframe values or adding tracks.

To access the Optimize Keyframes tool:

1. From the editor's media/playback controls, click the ⋯ button and select Optimize Keyframes.

   

2. In the popup window, move the slider to the desired number of keyframes. You can preview and play back the animation to verify the optimization.

3. Click OK when complete.

Loop an animation

To make an animation automatically loop, navigate to the media/playback controls and click the Looping button.

Set a priority

An animation's priority (Enum.AnimationPriority) dictates when it will play in a game. For example, if you play an animation with a higher priority than another animation that's already playing, the new animation will override the old. For example, a "jump" animation should take priority over an "idle" animation so that a character doesn't perform both at the same time.

Roblox uses seven levels of priority, ordered here from highest to lowest:

Action4

Action3

Action2

Action

Movement

Idle

Core

To set an animation to a different priority:

1. Navigate to the editor's media/playback controls and click the ⋯ button.

   

2. Hover over Set Animation Priority and choose the desired priority setting.

Save an animation

When you save an animation, Studio saves it as a KeyframeSequence object in ServerStorage and adds a reference to your rig object. Saving your animation is meant to preserve your animation progress and work. If you intend to use an animation, export it before referencing the published animation in your game.

To save an animation:

1. Navigate to the editor's media/playback controls and click the ⋯ button.

   

2. Select Save or Save As to save the animation in ServerStorage.

   

Correctly Access Local Animation Data
local rig = workspace.Rig

-- Access your local animation data with the value reference in your rig
local anim = rig.AnimSaves.Value.[SavedAnimation]

Export an animation

When you export an animation to Studio, it becomes available for use in all games. This means that you only need to create an animation once, then you can reuse it as many times as you want.

To export an animation:

1. IMPORTANT

   If the animation will be used to replace a default character animation like running or jumping, rename the final keyframe End as follows:

   1. Right-click the final keyframe symbol in the upper bar region and choose Rename Key Keyframe from the contextual menu.

      

   2. Type End (case-sensitive) into the input field.

   3. Click the Save button.

2. Navigate to the editor's media/playback controls and click the ⋯ button.

   

3. Select Publish to Roblox from the contextual menu.

4. In the Asset Configuration window, enter an animation title and optional description.

5. IMPORTANT

   If the animation will be used in any group-owned game, select the group from the Creator field.

6. Click the Submit button.

Once the upload is complete, you can copy the animation's asset ID from the Toolbox for scripting custom animations or to replace default character animations, as outlined in Use animations.