animate (r6) oddities

February 7, 2025

roblox

roblox r6 is weird lol

animate script

(accurate as of when this was published)

r6 is as old as roblox itself, and the same can probably be said for its animate script idk i joined in 2019. this is a frankenstein's monster kind of thing, evolving over the years to become some being.

roblox uses it's own version of lua called luau, which has some syntactic differences and new (and removed) features.

tool animations

roblox has Gears/Tools, and one of them is called the Linked Sword (the script i will be referring to however, is the creator marketplace version, not the marketplace/catalog verison)

a Gear is a marketplace/catalog upload of a Tool, something that a player can carry and use with special functionality, like attacking or rats.

fun fact

(this is speculation; take this with a pepsi can of salt)

the Linked Sword has Linked in it probably because of an old feature called BaseScript.LinkedSource, an old, deprecated property where a Script could set its source to another script by its uploaded URL. a Script's source can basically be another Script online on Roblox. it's since been removed.

normally, to play animations, you'd create an Animation instance with an ID to an animation. then, you'd load that Animation onto a player character's Animator, which returns an AnimationTrack you can play.

probably for compatibility reasons, though, the roblox sword and animate script is a little more interesting.

let's go to the SwordScript and view line 116 (function Attack), which handles all the sword's first slash logic (that is followed up by a lunge).

within it, there's this snippet:

local Anim = Instance.new("StringValue")
Anim.Name = "toolanim"
Anim.Value = "Slash"
Anim.Parent = Tool

aside from the R15 implementation, there is no mention of Animation instances, or Animator, or whatever, but an animation still plays. what's happening?

well, the Animate script automatically handles this.

at the end of the animation script is this endless loop:

while Figure.Parent ~= nil do
	local _, time = wait(0.1)
	move(time)
end

well, what's move? it's at line 463, and within this function is where we handle these sword animations: toolnone, toolslash, and toollunge.

-- Tool Animation handling
local tool = getTool()
if tool and tool:FindFirstChild("Handle") then

	local animStringValueObject = getToolAnim(tool)

	if animStringValueObject then
		toolAnim = animStringValueObject.Value
		-- message recieved, delete StringValue
		animStringValueObject.Parent = nil
		toolAnimTime = time + .3
	end

	if time > toolAnimTime then
		toolAnimTime = 0
		toolAnim = "None"
	end

	animateTool()
else
	stopToolAnimations()
	toolAnim = "None"
	toolAnimInstance = nil
	toolAnimTime = 0
end

let's break this down.

if the player is holding a Tool and it has a Part named Handle
find a StringValue named toolanim within the Tool (sound familiar?) (internally, this iterates through tool's children instead of using FindFirstChild)
if we have this toolanim, then
set toolAnim to the Value of that StringValue, then "destroy" (not using Destroy apparently) said StringValue
do some magic or something
play the animation the Tool wants, which links toolAnim to each tool animation recorded in a table: Slash -> toolslash, Lunge -> toollunge, etc.

and that's how the r6 sword animation works. cool.

tl;dr: the Linked Sword creates a StringValue into its Tool named to toolanim and has a Value for the Animate script to handle

hardcoded animation

a roblox Humanoid WalkSpeed can be changed to be faster or slower. thus, the animation speed should also be changed or else there would be footsliding shenanigans and all tha

roblox developers can fork the default Animate script, and many usually do this to change animations or change some functionality.

the Animate script has these Animation instances under it for what animations it can play (walk, jump, etc.) and a little lua table as well, and you can change it! however, if you do that, your walk animation speed would no longer be in sync with your WalkSpeed: it would stay at the same, static speed. why?

see a snippet of the onRunning function (line 352):

if currentAnimInstance and currentAnimInstance.AnimationId == "http://www.roblox.com/asset/?id=180426354" then
	setAnimationSpeed(speed / 14.5)
end

what it's basically doing is if the current playing Animation ID has this specific hardcoded roblox asset id, then set the animation walk speed based on the Humanoid's WalkSpeed. hence, it will ONLY change it if it's the default walk animation, not any custom ones.

/e dance1

/e dance, /e dance2, and /e dance3 all plays the emotes without any problems, but why does /e dance1 play but the chat says you can't?

the Animate script handles your own chat message, and will silently fail if it cannot find the emote you want to play. the error comes from the Chat (now deprecated and replaced) itself, which doesn't complain when you hit any valid emote EXCEPT /e dance1

/e dance2

this is an old one, but i guess it fits.

if you slightly angle yourself parallel to a thin wall, maybe half of a stud thick, angle your camera perpendicular to the wall on the right, dance2, and shift lock right when farthest to the right, you're clip right through it.

i forgot why this works exactly, but it has something to do with the fact that the (invisible) root part, which does not move, is detached from your torso, which does in the animation.

r6 joints

i don't know when, but sometime after 2019, the leg joints, in particular, had a weird thing happen to it.

bit late for this, but there are 6 parts to the r6 rig (+1 for the HumanoidRootPart)

Head
Torso
Left Arm
Right Arm
Left Leg
Right Leg

they are all connected to each other with Motor6Ds, which are basically joints. the Torso is connected to the HumanoidRootPart, and every limb and the head connects to the Torso.

for some reason, though, the offsets on the legs... moved. instead of being dead center, it went farther to the outside.

(orange is Torso connector (c0), green is Right Leg connector (c1)) old: c0 middle-right, c1 middle; new: c0 full right, c1 full right

i only noticed this because i was making a ragdoll script sometime after 2019, and this was a pain.

...how could you make a ragdoll script with this?

aouughh.

ok so:

Motor6Ds, which are joints, have 2 connections: C0 and C1, which are relative positions based on the first part and second part respectively
referring to the above image, C0 is orange and is the point of connection for the first part, and C1 is green and is the point of connection for the second part
roblox has constraints, like the BallSocketConstraint, and these are connected by Attachments
Attachments, like C0 and C1, can be used to place constraint attachments to where a Motor6D's C0 and C1 are since they are relative to their Part

thus, you can automatically make connections by:

add Attachments to each Motor6D's C0 and C1
create a BallSocketConstraint that connects to the two Attachments just created
disable each Motor6D
ragdoll

there are a whole lot of other things to be aware of, like collisions and death, but this is basically how.

prior to this change, the Motor6Ds C0s and C1s were perfectly natural; nothing really needed to be changed... and then this attacked. now characters, on death, do the split, and it looks really odd.

not sure if the arms also had this issue, but the legs were definitely noticable.

if it's relevant, i think there was an issue on the devforum of some avatar bundle/package (maybe the woman 2.0 model) had the outside joint issue, and they fixed it by... applying that issue to every other model? i think? it could be accessory attachment points, not sure, but i feel like there was something related.

end

next time i'll talk about mcdonald's or something. yeah. byby.

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