How to Enable Facial Animations Using Your Camera on Roblox
When turned on, Roblox will use your camera to mimic your facial animations and expressions on your avatar in supported experiences.
Today, avatar chat using your device’s camera went live on Roblox. When enabled, Roblox will track your facial animations and expressions in real-time and mimic them on your avatar.
Going back to when facial animation was first being worked on, in December 2020, Roblox acquired Loom.ai, a company that specializes in creating realistic facial animations and expressions for virtual avatars. In a statement, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki stated that “Loom.ai will accelerate making human co-experiences more immersive and personal, adding world-class facial animation technology as part of Roblox’s efforts to provide expressive emotive actions to avatars that will enable deeper connections.”
At Roblox’s Investor Day held in November 2021, Roblox showed their progress, and clarified that no matter what type of avatar you use, Roblox’s upcoming facial tracking and animation feature will work simultaneously with your voice.
In June 2022, Roblox released a feature that allowed creators to create facial animations using the new Face Animation Editor tool in Studio. You can animate any supported head through the Animation Editor by manually setting poses on the animation track, using the Face Animation Editor to quickly create complex expressions, or using the Animation Capture tool to automatically track facial movements from your webcam.
Earlier this year, a test place was made public for a short period of time that showcased what facial animation would inevitably look like on avatars.
On July 31, 2023, the ability to chat with your avatar using real-time facial animations was released to the public. This feature uses your device’s camera to track how you are moving your head and the facial expressions you are making in real life. Check out a preview of how it works in experiences that have it enabled below:
To enable your camera in experiences that support it, head to your Privacy settings to toggle it. Note that you must verify your age to access this feature.
If you are a developer that wants to allow the use of cameras in your experience, open Studio and head to the Game Settings menu. Under Communication, toggle the “Enable Camera” option. A new indication on the experience details page will show what kinds of communication methods are supported in that experience.
If you have it enabled, you can test facial animations for yourself by joining this experience, or any experience that allows for Camera communication.
