Technical Artist – Rigging Automation

 

Problem: Roblox needed to migrate legacy R6 rigs (6-joint skeletons with meshes directly parented to bones) into the new R15 rig system, which supported more articulation and customization. Manually re-rigging was repetitive, error-prone, and could take hours per character.

 

Solution: Developed a Python/MEL automation tool that:

 

Stripped meshes from the old R6 hierarchy.

 

Froze transforms and cleaned up orientation.

 

Re-attached meshes automatically to the correct joints in the new R15 rig.

 

Impact: Reduced a process that took hours of manual labor down to seconds, ensuring consistency and accuracy at scale. This automation supported Roblox’s transition to the R15 avatar system, which now serves 380M+ monthly active users.