Full-Body Avatars Hub
Check this webpage to stay up to date on where Full-Body Avatars is at!
UPDATE as of 6/12/24Hey all! Sadly, this is gonna be our last beta rollout :,(That’s because EVERYONE has access to the Full Body Avatars Beta as of RIGHT NOW! Thanks to the feedback you’ve all provided as well as some great testing work done by the Avatars team, we feel confident releasing the Beta to everyone instead of going through more rollouts! Also, as a reward for trying out FBA during the beta you’ll get a FREE, EXCLUSIVE beta sweater! You’ll be able to wear it with your bean or full body avatar body to show you were one of the pioneers of having limbs in Rec Room.This doesn’t mean we’re done working on Full Body (honestly it’s the opposite), so expect more features and updates to FBA over the next few months. This includes iterations to face and body shapes coming soon, and we’ll have a dev blog coming out a little after that details more of the changes we’re working on. We still need your feedback to make the full release the best it can be, so please continue to share your thoughts with us!Thank you for all your help so far and we’ll be in touch soon - keep giving it your Rec Room Best!
Check out our Deep Dive on Avatars!The full body avatar beta is now available for everyone! To celebrate, we wanted to share some of the nerdy details on how we made the full body avatar work and a refresher on why we did it.Read Now!
And keep an eye out for other lower-body specific items like pants and shoes and these Froggy Boots!
This is just another step towards letting you customize your avatar to your heart’s content, with updates for head and body shapes right around the corner (and even more options coming soon!).If you don’t yet have access to the beta but want to be able to see FBA only items (pants and shoes) you can toggle the setting to see them on and off in the watch settings under Misc. You won’t get access to the beta from buying these items, but when you get access to the beta and eventual full release you’ll be able to see (and wear!) these items in your inventory. There will also be a warning about this in-game if you try to purchase the item without current access.We’ve been listening to your feedback about FBA and there are more fixes and improvements directly from some of your suggestions that are landing soon. If you have more suggestions or questions, please voice them HERE! Thanks for all your help so far and we’re excited to share more updates with you shortly!
Want to check if you have access to the beta?Open your game and head to the ‘customize’ menu - you’ll see if you’re eligible to use FBA there! What can you expect? New eyes, eyebrows, noses, mouths, limbs, feet, hands (and fingers!) are just the start. Tons of your existing outfits (like TMNT items) are already optimized for Full Body Avatars, with way more on the way! Try out your existing inventory or check the store for more options to style your way.
Don't worry, beans aren't going anywhere.For all those concerned about the change of style, FBA is totally optional and bean avatars aren’t going anywhere. We’re committed to letting players express themselves however they want, and beans are the foundation of Rec Room’s style. We plan to update beans alongside FBA and want to continue finding new pathways to letting all players customize the way they’d like to!
Why a beta period and how long will it last?We recognize some areas of this new body type will still need some work – a bunch of outfit items need polish, the way grabbing looks and functions is still a work in progress, and some animations need love. There are a handful of features from bean-bodies that we haven’t implemented yet: adjusting hat positions and customizing face and body shapes are not yet ready.Stay tuned for a future update where you’ll be able to customize your body and face shapes beyond just picking from a handful of presets. Full-Body Holotars, scaling yourself up and down in maker pen mode while in full-body, costumes working on the full-body option, and full-body VR tracking are also features that will not be available on day 1.
This is a prototype we built in Blender of the various body shapes you’ll be able to choose
Instead of waiting until this work is done, we decided it’s better to get this new option in your hands so we can iterate on your feedback.Although our initial launch date was late 2023, we decided to push into 2024. We wanted to take some extra time to optimize across all of our platforms. The result is that Full-Body Avatars are even more performant than our beloved bean-bodies on iOS, Android, XBox, Playstation, Windows, and all of our supported VR devices.We plan to be out of Beta by mid-2024, but that may change based on the feedback we get from our community. And rest assured, that even when the beta period ends, the bean-body will continue to be an option you can use.
How will outfit items on a Full-Body Avatar work?We've put in the work to ensure that all bean-body items you may already own will also have a full-body version. So, when you switch between the two avatar types, your outfit and cosmetic customizations will look very familiar. During the beta period, we'll still be polishing up any outfits that don't look right, so don't hesitate to let us know about your favorites that need extra attention by leaving a suggestion on the new avatars feature upvote link.
Help us out!We’re so excited for you to try out Full Body Avatars and all of the new features they bring, but to make them even better we need YOUR help. Your feedback is vital to the future of FBA, so make sure to add your input to the upvote board, visit the discord to talk with others about FBA, and check out recroom.com/fbabeta for the latest about upcoming features and rollout plans!Thanks for all of the support so far, we’ll be in touch with more feature updates coming soon (like face and body shapes). Keep your eyes peeled here and on the official discord for the latest about the beta!
FAQ
Will this new avatar type be optional?Absolutely! Full-Body Avatars are entirely optional, and you can stick with your trusty bean-body if you prefer.
Can I use my existing cosmetics and outfit items with a Full-Body Avatar type?Yes! All existing cosmetics will work with Full-Body Avatars on full release. Minor bugs or differences in looks may still need adjustments, but we're committed to fixing any oddities.
Are the noses optional?Yes, choose from various noses or choose not to have a nose at all - the choice is yours!
Are the eyebrows optional?Yes, choose from various eyebrow styles or choose not to have eyebrows at all - the choice is yours!
Will the Full-Body Avatar type have hitboxes for their limbs?Yes. It felt right to us that if it looks like you should be able to hit a part of the avatar, you should be able to hit it. During our internal testing, playing with the different body types had no material impact on which team won in games like Paintball and Laser Tag. We also decided that the social gameplay of Rec Room is more important than competitive play. So, if you feel that one avatar type may have a slight advantage over another in highly competitive leagues, we encourage you to have rules that enforce that everyone uses the same body type.
With the addition of legs and feet, will we get cosmetics for those body parts?Absolutely! Unique pants and shoes are in the works for Full-Body Avatars.
Will the Full-Body Avatar use the same IK system as the current Full-body costumes?Not exactly. We’re building off the full-body costume system but have updated and improved it for Full-Body Avatars. We did not touch the bean body’s full-body costume IK system, so it should behave the same when the full-body option launches. We do have plans in the near term to update the full-body costume to use the new Full-Body Avatar systems so we don’t have to maintain two systems.
How will room costumes work with this new full-body type?For legacy costumes, we decided that this prop was created for bean bodies and wouldn’t look right with limbs, so all legacy costumes will override your body type back to the bean body when you equip them. For full-body costumes, on day 1 of the beta, it will switch you back to the bean-body version since all costumes that exist now were created to look good on the bean body. In a future update, we will add a configuration option so the creator can decide if the full-body costume works with bean bodies, full bodies, or both.psst, we thought about how some room creators may use this feature to enforce a dress code in their rooms, and we decided that’s a valid use case ;) .
Will we be getting full-body tracking?Yes, but not on release. We’re not ready to share details on how FBT will work since it’s still a work in progress. Expect to hear more in a future dev blog.
Will we be getting finger tracking?Yes, but not on release. We’re not ready to share details on how finger tracking will work since it’s still a work in progress. Expect to hear more in a future dev blog.
Will the existing bean body avatar type be removed in the future?We plan to support bean bodies indefinitely. We love the bean body and believe it is important for how much of our community chooses to look and play in RR.We are also eager to get this new avatar type in your hands and start getting feedback. As much as we understand the community's love for the bean, we chose to take time on the Full-body avatar launch so that we could get it right. We are committed to the potential of it and want the community to be too! But that doesn't mean we will stop prioritizing a seamless experience for both avatar types across all of our platforms.We are grateful to you for following the dev blog series and are sorry that it took so long to give a new update. Keep an eye out for future updates in the dev blog and the creator hub, where we’ll talk about what’s next from the avatars team.