Roblox launches 'Dynamic Heads' giving developers ability to add facial animations

On Monday, Roblox launched a new developer-only feature called Dynamic Heads to the platform, giving its developers the option to animate the face structure of NPCs and add emotion with facial animations.

In an announcement blog post released by a Roblox employee to the community's DevForum, they also teased the possibility of adding this feature to the platform's Avatar Shop later this year for their nearly 51 million daily active players to access.

For context, over the last several years, all face accessories on the platform have been simple, low-quality still images that players can equip to add to their character, which has become a part of the platform’s culture.

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Ability to sculpt Roblox avatars

Part of this update includes allowing developers to sculpt faces in their games to their liking to fit a certain expression they are trying to achieve. The team at Roblox has shown many examples of how the new feature may be used inside the game, from how face animation works to dynamic heads in action.

Some developers are quickly taking advantage of new technology, making face animations and implementing these new things in their games wherever they feel best. One developer @dyscheofficial said:

"I wrote a short script to generate a random face animation using Roblox's new facial animation system. And oh god, what have I done."

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Endless possibilities

This feature truly does unlock a lot of possibilities, one even being that it makes it significantly easier than ever to add realistic talking movements to avatars.

It makes things much easier for the average developer to create incredible mini-movies for the community to enjoy, such as the hit 2019 YouTube Animated Series by ObliviousHD, "The Last Guest," garnering over 71 million views to date.

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Community's reaction

This new addition to the platform will bring about many exciting opportunities, such as face animation paired alongside emotes, making avatars more realistic by adding blinking, and much more. The overall consensus from the community seems to be quite positive.

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Concerns

However, with some developers, there lies the concern of optimization. They quickly put this to rest, saying in their blog post:

"While Dynamic Heads were in beta we ran performance tests to ensure that Dynamic Heads did not materially affect the performance of any live experience. We are constantly looking for feedback so let us know if you encounter any issues."

This is a fantastic addition to the platform's wave of new technology, with one of the most recent being the addition of VR Support.