Avatar Evolution is no longer actively maintained. Most of these features will soon be available in standard Roblox Studio.

Avatar Evolution represents a massive cross-team effort working on prototyping and building a suite of new technology to enable developers to create next-generation games and avatars on Roblox:

Skeletal skinning a.k.a. “Mesh deformation”

Custom PBR surface appearances

New physics components for more stable and realistic characters

Improved mesh and animation importers

And more exciting features coming soon!

Even though it’s still early and these features are in varying stages of pre-release development we’re releasing a special beta build of Roblox Studio where you can try them today.

Everything here is subject to change before release!

Let us know what you think! We’re putting this build out in an early state to get your feedback while we still have the freedom to make large changes before it goes live. Help us shape the future of Roblox!

Studio Beta Build

This prototype build of Roblox Studio includes:

Skeletal skinning with MeshParts and Bones

and Custom SurfaceAppearances for Parts

for Parts Improved mesh and animation importers

New physics instances used by the new character controller suite

You can download it here:

This is a custom build of Roblox Studio. Make sure to extract the .zip to your computer before running the build — don’t run directly from .zip.

On Windows : Extract zip to a new folder, open that folder, run RobloxStudioBeta.exe

: Extract zip to a new folder, open that folder, run On macOS: Extract zip, run the extracted RobloxStudio.app

Use of this build is subject to a limited use licence.

If you find issues with new features in this build please report them on GitHub. We really want your feedback!

Warning: Don’t use this build to edit published places or anything you’re not ready to lose! This build includes support for several new APIs that aren’t supported in live games or team create. We may add/remove/rename any of these new classes before release. Data loss may occur!

New Character Controller

We’re working on a new componentized character controller suite written from scratch in Lua, built on top of newly formulated physics components included in this special build.

The intent is to eventually replace Humanoids as the default controller, with existing games left as-is with the option to opt-in.

You can find documentation for the new controller here. (.pdf)

New Mesh and Animation importer

We’ve spent a lot of time rewriting the internals of the mesh and animation importer to make it more reliable and consistent. The importer also now supports importing meshes with skinning information.

Read about how to import skinned meshes here.

New Physically Based Rendering and Textures

We’ve upgraded our rendering engine to support more realistic looking surfaces. We’ve added a SurfaceAppearance Instance to allow custom inputs to this system, including:

Normal maps

Metalness textures

Roughness textures

Read more about how to use PBR and SurfaceAppearance here.

New API

This beta build includes several new classes.

And new functionality for several existing types:

MeshPart — skinned mesh support

FileMesh — skinned mesh support

Animator — support for animating Bones

Warning: These new types aren’t supported on production and may change dramatically before release. Don’t use them in places or models used in a live game! Production servers and clients don’t know these new Instances exist. They won’t work in Team Create either!

API Stability Status

Unlike production APIs, these new APIs are subject to change dramatically between builds. Many of them are incomplete or otherwise don’t yet match our internal specifications.

Stable: Subject to change but mostly matches spec.

Bone

MeshPart

SurfaceAppearance

Unstable: