Roblox R6 vs R15 Explained (October 2026): Body Parts, Scaling, Animation Limits, and Which Rig Your Game Should Use
Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2026 11:36 am
Quick Summary
Every Roblox avatar is a small model made of named parts, plus a rigging armature underneath that lets those parts move. The rig name is just the part count. R6 has six parts. R15 has fifteen, and Roblox spreads those fifteen across the arms and legs so the limbs can bend at the joints. The community wiki's R6 article describes R6 as "6 body parts" or "6 joints", and the R15 article calls R15 the default avatar body and animation rig with more joints that is able to bend.
Roblox still uses the six-part naming today, even though a body has fifteen meshes. When you upload a character body to the Marketplace, Roblox splits it into six assets: DynamicHead, Torso, LeftArm, RightArm, LeftLeg, and RightLeg. Those six names are the R6 part list.
The third name you will run into, Rthro, is not really a separate rig. It is a body scale. Roblox supports three body scales, Normal, Slender, and Classic, and the Studio Importer exposes them as Rig Type options: Rthro for Normal, Rthro Narrow for Slender, and Default for Classic.
The Part Count, and What You Notice In Game
An R15 avatar has 15 separate body part meshes: the head, an upper and lower torso, then an upper arm, lower arm, and hand on each side, and an upper leg, lower leg, and foot on each side. A standard R15 rig needs 15 poseable joints to drive those 15 parts, and the rigging armature underneath includes at least 16 bones, one for each body part plus a root bone.
The practical difference is that an R15 character can bend. Elbows, knees, spine, and on the higher-fidelity rigs even fingers and toes. An R6 character cannot, which is why R15 was the first Roblox avatar body to have bendable limbs at all, and why the older rig still reads as blocky next to it.
The gap gets wider if you push past a standard rig. Roblox allows up to 37 additional optional joints for advanced R15 rigs, for spine and chest subdivisions, left and right clavicles, a head base for neck and facial articulation, up to 15 joints per hand, and toe bases. Those extra joints are what let a character make a fist or turn its head without a custom animation doing all the work.
R6 is not empty-handed. It still supports classic clothing and a good chunk of the accessory library. The point is that layered clothing and the newer dynamic head features were built for the 15-part body, and R6 has been left out of most of what shipped after 2016.
Scaling, the Sliders R6 Never Got
Scaling is the cleanest example of how the two rigs diverged. Roblox added body scaling on November 17, 2016, and at the time it was available only for R15. On May 30, 2018, two more sliders showed up in the scaling interface, Body Type and Proportions. Those were capped at 30 percent until October 22, 2018, when Roblox unlocked them to 100 percent alongside Rthro.
That same year, the default R15 rig changed. On May 16, 2018, Roblox gave the default R15 rig shorter limbs so it would line up with Rthro proportions. Players noticed immediately, because the change moved where the joints sat and made the gaps between parts more visible in motion.
Body scale is a separate thing from rig choice, and it has its own hard rules. Roblox supports three standards, Normal, Slender, and Classic, all sharing the same bounding box limits. The minimum total body dimension is 1.0 by 4.0 by 0.5 studs, and the maximum total is 8.0 by 10.0 by 4.0 studs. Individual parts have their own limits too, and the validator measures each limb after rotating it to a standard orientation, so a part that is legal in one pose can fail in another.
Triangles are capped as well. When a body uploads, it splits into six assets with a combined maximum of 10,742 triangles: 4,000 for DynamicHead, 1,750 for the torso, and 1,248 each for the left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg. Double your quad count in Blender or Maya and you will be in the right ballpark before import.
Animation, Emotes, and the Features R6 Misses
R15 went public on September 29, 2016, and the animation packs followed on January 17, 2017, starting with Stylish, Robot, Superhero, Zombie, and Levitation. Those packs are the reason R15 characters can look so different from each other without anyone touching a keyframe.
The R15 animation system is also not interchangeable with R6. The two animate scripts play back at different speeds, which is a detail that bites people who copy the default R15 script into an R6 game and expect the timing to match.
The bigger issue is feature access. The author of a widely used community converter, 6to15, puts it bluntly: Roblox has excluded R6 from every new avatar feature except UGC, including MeshPart heads and accessories, and by extension dynamic heads. That is a community observation rather than an official statement, but it matches what players report. R6 games can still look good. They just do not get the newest tools without someone building a bridge.
There are bridges if you need one. The 6to15 plugin converts animations between R6 and R15 and can play a single animation on both rigs at once. The author warns that easing between keyframes will not transfer exactly, which cannot be fixed, and that heavy animations can take minutes to convert on slower machines.
Which Rig Your Experience Should Use
Developers control the rig through the experience settings. Open your place in Studio, go to Game Settings, and look under the Avatar tab. That is where you set whether players spawn as R6, R15, or Rthro, and whether scaling is left to the player or locked down. Studio's labels move around between versions, so treat the Avatar tab as the place to look rather than a promise about the exact wording on your screen.
A short checklist for picking a rig:
Switching Your Own Avatar
Players can flip their own rig from the Avatar Editor. The toggle has moved over the years. A 2021 Reddit thread has users reporting that it was no longer where it used to be and had been moved under Body, in the Scale section. Third-party guides describe it as the Body section with an Avatar Type option that switches between R6 and R15.
If the toggle does not seem to take effect, the usual fix is to reset your character in game and give the editor a moment to re-render. Roblox has an official help article on customizing your avatar in a browser, and a separate one for mobile, if the layout has changed again since this was written.
FAQ
Q: Can I switch from R15 back to R6?
A: Yes. The toggle lives in the Avatar Editor, and it has moved between versions. Recent player reports place it under Body, in the Scale section. Changes may take a moment to show up, and resetting your character in game can force a refresh.
Q: Will Roblox remove R6?
A: Roblox announced in its 2016 avatar blog posts that R6 would stay available after an earlier plan to retire it. It is technically deprecated and it has real feature gaps, but it is still supported and still used by a lot of games.
Q: Do my clothes and accessories work on both rigs?
A: Classic clothing is shared between rigs. Layered accessories and dynamic heads are built around the 15-part body and the cage meshes that come with it, so they are an R15-side feature. Roblox documents 15 WrapTarget objects and 19 attachment points on the standard avatar.
Q: Which rig should I pick for a new game?
A: R15, unless the blocky look is the whole point of the game. You get the scaling sliders, the advanced rig option, layered clothing deformation, and facial animation, and you are building on the rig that receives new avatar features.
Q: Can I use an R6 animation on an R15 character?
A: Yes, with a converter. Community tools such as 6to15 handle the conversion and can play one animation on both rigs. Expect easing to differ between rigs, and expect long animations to take a while to convert.
Q: Why does my R6 avatar look wrong in game?
A: It happens. There are developer reports of accessories rendering blurry or differently on R6 avatars in game compared with the website preview, which suggests a rendering path difference rather than a broken item. Check the item on both rigs before assuming the accessory is at fault.
Sources
- R6 and R15 are the two avatar rigs Roblox players and developers choose between, and the number is the part count: 6 parts versus 15
- R15 is the default rig. It bends at the elbows, knees, and waist, and it is the only rig that gets the full modern avatar toolset
- R6 is still available, still playable, and still used by plenty of games, but almost every new avatar feature has landed on R15 first
- An uploaded avatar body has hard limits: 15 meshes, a total triangle budget of 10,742, and a bounding box that maxes out at 8 by 10 by 4 studs
- Unless you have a specific reason to stay on R6, build your experience for R15
Every Roblox avatar is a small model made of named parts, plus a rigging armature underneath that lets those parts move. The rig name is just the part count. R6 has six parts. R15 has fifteen, and Roblox spreads those fifteen across the arms and legs so the limbs can bend at the joints. The community wiki's R6 article describes R6 as "6 body parts" or "6 joints", and the R15 article calls R15 the default avatar body and animation rig with more joints that is able to bend.
Roblox still uses the six-part naming today, even though a body has fifteen meshes. When you upload a character body to the Marketplace, Roblox splits it into six assets: DynamicHead, Torso, LeftArm, RightArm, LeftLeg, and RightLeg. Those six names are the R6 part list.
The third name you will run into, Rthro, is not really a separate rig. It is a body scale. Roblox supports three body scales, Normal, Slender, and Classic, and the Studio Importer exposes them as Rig Type options: Rthro for Normal, Rthro Narrow for Slender, and Default for Classic.
The Part Count, and What You Notice In Game
An R15 avatar has 15 separate body part meshes: the head, an upper and lower torso, then an upper arm, lower arm, and hand on each side, and an upper leg, lower leg, and foot on each side. A standard R15 rig needs 15 poseable joints to drive those 15 parts, and the rigging armature underneath includes at least 16 bones, one for each body part plus a root bone.
The practical difference is that an R15 character can bend. Elbows, knees, spine, and on the higher-fidelity rigs even fingers and toes. An R6 character cannot, which is why R15 was the first Roblox avatar body to have bendable limbs at all, and why the older rig still reads as blocky next to it.
The gap gets wider if you push past a standard rig. Roblox allows up to 37 additional optional joints for advanced R15 rigs, for spine and chest subdivisions, left and right clavicles, a head base for neck and facial articulation, up to 15 joints per hand, and toe bases. Those extra joints are what let a character make a fist or turn its head without a custom animation doing all the work.
| Capability | R6 | R15 |
| Body parts | 6 | 15 |
| Bendable limbs | No | Yes, at elbows, knees, and waist |
| Body scaling sliders | No | Yes, height, width, body type, proportions |
| Advanced rig with extra joints | No | Up to 37 optional joints |
| Facial animation | No | Yes, FaceControls with at least 17 base poses |
| Layered clothing deformation | No | Yes, via 15 WrapTarget objects |
Scaling, the Sliders R6 Never Got
Scaling is the cleanest example of how the two rigs diverged. Roblox added body scaling on November 17, 2016, and at the time it was available only for R15. On May 30, 2018, two more sliders showed up in the scaling interface, Body Type and Proportions. Those were capped at 30 percent until October 22, 2018, when Roblox unlocked them to 100 percent alongside Rthro.
That same year, the default R15 rig changed. On May 16, 2018, Roblox gave the default R15 rig shorter limbs so it would line up with Rthro proportions. Players noticed immediately, because the change moved where the joints sat and made the gaps between parts more visible in motion.
Body scale is a separate thing from rig choice, and it has its own hard rules. Roblox supports three standards, Normal, Slender, and Classic, all sharing the same bounding box limits. The minimum total body dimension is 1.0 by 4.0 by 0.5 studs, and the maximum total is 8.0 by 10.0 by 4.0 studs. Individual parts have their own limits too, and the validator measures each limb after rotating it to a standard orientation, so a part that is legal in one pose can fail in another.
Triangles are capped as well. When a body uploads, it splits into six assets with a combined maximum of 10,742 triangles: 4,000 for DynamicHead, 1,750 for the torso, and 1,248 each for the left arm, right arm, left leg, and right leg. Double your quad count in Blender or Maya and you will be in the right ballpark before import.
Animation, Emotes, and the Features R6 Misses
R15 went public on September 29, 2016, and the animation packs followed on January 17, 2017, starting with Stylish, Robot, Superhero, Zombie, and Levitation. Those packs are the reason R15 characters can look so different from each other without anyone touching a keyframe.
The R15 animation system is also not interchangeable with R6. The two animate scripts play back at different speeds, which is a detail that bites people who copy the default R15 script into an R6 game and expect the timing to match.
The bigger issue is feature access. The author of a widely used community converter, 6to15, puts it bluntly: Roblox has excluded R6 from every new avatar feature except UGC, including MeshPart heads and accessories, and by extension dynamic heads. That is a community observation rather than an official statement, but it matches what players report. R6 games can still look good. They just do not get the newest tools without someone building a bridge.
There are bridges if you need one. The 6to15 plugin converts animations between R6 and R15 and can play a single animation on both rigs at once. The author warns that easing between keyframes will not transfer exactly, which cannot be fixed, and that heavy animations can take minutes to convert on slower machines.
Which Rig Your Experience Should Use
Developers control the rig through the experience settings. Open your place in Studio, go to Game Settings, and look under the Avatar tab. That is where you set whether players spawn as R6, R15, or Rthro, and whether scaling is left to the player or locked down. Studio's labels move around between versions, so treat the Avatar tab as the place to look rather than a promise about the exact wording on your screen.
A short checklist for picking a rig:
- If your game leans on emotes, layered clothing, dynamic heads, or facial animation, use R15
- If you want custom body proportions or player-controlled scaling, use R15, since the sliders are R15 only
- If your whole art style is built on the blocky six-part look, R6 is still a legitimate choice
- If you are starting a new game today, start on R15 and switch only if you have a reason
- If you support both, test each rig separately, because animations and accessories do not behave identically across them
Switching Your Own Avatar
Players can flip their own rig from the Avatar Editor. The toggle has moved over the years. A 2021 Reddit thread has users reporting that it was no longer where it used to be and had been moved under Body, in the Scale section. Third-party guides describe it as the Body section with an Avatar Type option that switches between R6 and R15.
If the toggle does not seem to take effect, the usual fix is to reset your character in game and give the editor a moment to re-render. Roblox has an official help article on customizing your avatar in a browser, and a separate one for mobile, if the layout has changed again since this was written.
FAQ
Q: Can I switch from R15 back to R6?
A: Yes. The toggle lives in the Avatar Editor, and it has moved between versions. Recent player reports place it under Body, in the Scale section. Changes may take a moment to show up, and resetting your character in game can force a refresh.
Q: Will Roblox remove R6?
A: Roblox announced in its 2016 avatar blog posts that R6 would stay available after an earlier plan to retire it. It is technically deprecated and it has real feature gaps, but it is still supported and still used by a lot of games.
Q: Do my clothes and accessories work on both rigs?
A: Classic clothing is shared between rigs. Layered accessories and dynamic heads are built around the 15-part body and the cage meshes that come with it, so they are an R15-side feature. Roblox documents 15 WrapTarget objects and 19 attachment points on the standard avatar.
Q: Which rig should I pick for a new game?
A: R15, unless the blocky look is the whole point of the game. You get the scaling sliders, the advanced rig option, layered clothing deformation, and facial animation, and you are building on the rig that receives new avatar features.
Q: Can I use an R6 animation on an R15 character?
A: Yes, with a converter. Community tools such as 6to15 handle the conversion and can play one animation on both rigs. Expect easing to differ between rigs, and expect long animations to take a while to convert.
Q: Why does my R6 avatar look wrong in game?
A: It happens. There are developer reports of accessories rendering blurry or differently on R6 avatars in game compared with the website preview, which suggests a rendering path difference rather than a broken item. Check the item on both rigs before assuming the accessory is at fault.
Sources
- Roblox Creator Documentation: Avatar, a system of expression (15 body parts, 15 joints, 37 optional joints)
- Roblox Creator Documentation: Character bodies (rigging armature, 16 bones, 15 meshes)
- Roblox Creator Documentation: Character body specifications (body scales, bounding box limits, triangle budgets)
- Roblox Creator Documentation: Characters (avatar component requirements, WrapTarget and attachment counts)
- Roblox Creator Documentation: Importer (Rig Type options for Rthro, Rthro Narrow, and Default)
- Roblox Support: Browser customizing your avatar
- Roblox Wiki: R15 (release date, scaling history, animation packs, scaling unlock)
- Roblox Wiki: R6 (part count, developer rig choice, continued availability)
- Roblox Developer Forum: 6to15 R6 to R15 animation converter (community observations on R6 feature gaps)
- Roblox Developer Forum: Accessories rendering differently on R6 avatars in game
- r/roblox: Players on the location of the R6 and R15 toggle in the Avatar Editor