Testing in Studio

Test your character model in Studio to understand how it looks and feels within a Roblox experience.

Roblox provides an Avatar Test experience that you can open in Studio and import your character model in. This experience provides a wide variety of environmental and clothing tests to ensure that your character model and related components work as expected.

Setting up Test Experience

The following is the general testing process setting up the Avatar Test experience:

1. Download and open the Avatar Test experience in Studio.
2. Import your avatar model into Studio.
3. Set your model as the starter character.
4. Launch a playtest of the experience.

Opening in Studio

In order to use the Avatar Test experience, you must first download it from Roblox. You can save the experience locally and make any changes that may help your testing workflow. Roblox may update this experience periodically to add or improve features.

To download the Avatar Test experience:

1. Navigate to the Avatar Test experience.

2. In the button next to the experience title, select … > Edit. The page navigates to the Studio launcher.

   

Importing

After you open the test experience in Studio, import your custom character model.

1. In the menu bar, navigate to Avatar > Import 3D. A file browser displays.

   

2. Select your custom character .fbx file.

3. Verify the following:

   1. With the highest level object selected, ensure Rig Type is set to R15.

      

   2. If using the template files, set Rig Scale to Rthro. Otherwise, use the appropriate rig scale for your character body type.

   3. Check for any red errors that may block import into Studio.

   4. Verify any yellow warnings that may indicate a quality issue with your avatar components.

   The 3D Importer may incorrectly report some cage meshes as not watertight. You can ignore these warnings for those cage objects.

4. Click Import. The character's model populates into the workspace.

Adding SurfaceAppearance

If you exported your textures separately, or if the 3D Importer fails to pick up your PBR textures, you can add them manually.

To add individual image texture files:

1. Open the Asset Toolbox. You may need to publish your experience first.

2. Bulk Upload the image map assets to your Asset Toolbox.

   

3. In the Explorer, expand the Head_Geo and check if a SurfaceAppearance object exists.

   • If SurfaceAppearance is present, continue to step 4.
   • If SurfaceAppearance is not present, select the ⊕ next to the Head_Geo and add a SurfaceAppearance object.

4. Set each property to the corresponding uploaded image map

   

5. Copy the SurfaceAppearance with the populated image map with CtrlC (⌘C).

6. Hold Shift and click all of your model's MeshParts to select all of your character's geometry.

7. Use CtrlShiftV (⌘ShiftV) to paste into all of the head geometries. An updated SurfaceAppearance populates in each MeshPart object.

   

Setting Model as StarterPlayer

In order to play as the character during a playtest, rename and move the model instance:

1. In the Explorer, rename the character model as StarterCharacter.

2. In the Explorer, navigate to the StarterPlayer directory. If a StarterCharacter model already exists, remove it.

3. Click and drag the model under the directory.

   

After you rename and add your model, navigate to the Test > Play button to start a test session of the experience as the custom model.

Using Test Experience

The Avatar Test experience includes several features in the interface and environment to quickly perform comprehensive tests of your avatar characters. You can use the test checklist to ensure you are reviewing all the important aspects of your avatar character.

When playtesting the experience, use the following UI buttons on the right side to open various testing tools and options:

Button	Description
Avatars and facial animation	Use this menu to swap between the custom avatar and control avatars. An additional button option allows you to loop through various facial animations to test your character's face expressions.
Emotes and animations	Use this menu to test various animations on your avatar character.
Skin tone color palette	Use this menu to select a new skin tone for your character. See Custom Skin Tones for more details on this implementation with template character models.
Clothes and accessories	Use this menu to select various clothing items to try on.
Movement settings	Use this menu to change movement settings for your character model, such as jump height and walk speed.
Body proportion settings	Use this menu to change various aspects of your character's body proportions.
Lighting presets	Use this menu to change the environment lighting to various presets, such as Mountains - Sunset, or Indoor - Midday.

Checklist

Use the following checklists to ensure that you are comprehensively testing each component of your avatar. Use the Avatar menu to switch between your custom avatar and a control avatar to verify expected behavior.

Movement and Animation

Check the following for any anomalies:

If you see unexpected behavior with your character's movement, there may be some issues with the rigging or skinning of your character. It may require revisiting the rigging and armature components of your avatar model in your modeling application.

Lighting and Color

Check the following for any anomalies:

If you see unexpected behavior with your character's appearance in various lighting and color selections, there may be some issues with the texturing of your character. It may require re-adjusting the texturing components of your avatar model in your modeling application.

Clothing and Accessories

Check the following for any anomalies:

If you see unexpected behavior with your character wearing clothes or equipping rigid accessories, there may be issues with the caging or attachment points of your character. You may need to re-adjust the cage mesh shapes or attachment objects of your avatar model in your modeling application.