Character creators sit at the intersection of self-expression, digital fashion, and 3D production. Roblox research shows how frequently people customize avatars and connect digital style with offline identity, while Reallusion product and marketplace reports provide benchmarks for professional character-creation tools, assets, and workflows.
Contents
- Avatar expression and identity
- Digital fashion and customization
- Avatar activity and marketplace behavior
- Brand influence and shopping behavior
- Character Creator software and asset benchmarks
- Marketplace pricing and content demand
- The creator economy behind virtual characters
Avatar expression and identity
The Roblox 2023 Digital Expression, Fashion & Beauty Trends Report found that avatar styling can matter as much as, or more than, physical-world styling for Gen Z respondents in the United States and United Kingdom. Fifty-six percent said styling their avatar was more important than styling themselves in the physical world. Among older Gen Z respondents aged 22–26, the share saying dressing up an avatar would be more important than dressing up physically rose to 64%.
Digital fashion was already broadly relevant in that report: 84% said it was at least somewhat important to them. Eighty-five percent said its importance had grown at least somewhat during the previous year, including 53% who said it had grown a lot. These figures describe survey responses from that report rather than a universal measure of all avatar users.
The 2025 Roblox Replay / Digital Expression Report measured several reasons Gen Z Roblox users change their avatars. Creativity was the leading reason at 47%. Trying out a new identity and standing out each accounted for 38%, while matching a mood accounted for 37%.
The same 2025 report found that 84% of surveyed users said their physical style was influenced by their digital self. Eighty-seven percent said experimenting with avatar style online first made them more comfortable expressing themselves offline. Respondents were 6.3 times more likely to say avatar expression felt better or more like them than posting photos on social media. In addition, 76% said experimenting with style in immersive spaces was highly important.
Emotional representation is another major design requirement. In the Roblox 2023 report, 86% said it was at least somewhat important that an avatar could express emotions so they could feel fully represented in the metaverse. This places facial expression, emotes, and expressive animation alongside clothing and body customization as core character-creator features.
Digital fashion and customization
Avatar customization is not limited to occasional profile edits. Roblox recorded 165 billion avatar updates during the first three quarters of 2023, up 38% year over year, according to the Roblox 2023 Digital Expression, Fashion & Beauty Trends Report. Users bought nearly 1.6 billion digital fashion items and accessories during the same period, a total up 15% year over year.
Hair and emotes show how specific character components can generate repeat activity. Users purchased more than 139 million hairstyles on Roblox in 2023, up 20% from the prior year. More than 7.3 million people bought five or more hairstyles that year. Separately, 9.8 million Roblox users bought emotes, and emote purchases rose 64% year over year.
Makeup customization also varies by audience. Thirty-five percent of respondents in the 2023 report said it was important to customize their avatar’s makeup daily or weekly. The share was 51% among respondents who identified as female.
| Avatar customization measure | Reported result | Measurement period or group |
|---|---|---|
| Avatar updates | 165 billion | First three quarters of 2023 |
| Digital fashion items and accessories bought | Nearly 1.6 billion | First three quarters of 2023 |
| Hairstyles purchased | More than 139 million | 2023 |
| Users buying five or more hairstyles | More than 7.3 million | 2023 |
| Users buying emotes | 9.8 million | 2023 |
Spending intentions were distributed across several price points. In the Roblox 2023 report, 52% said they were comfortable budgeting up to $10 per month for digital fashion. Nineteen percent said they were willing to spend up to $20 per month, while 18% were open to buying $50–$100 of digital fashion items every month. These are stated willingness-to-spend figures, not reported transaction averages.
Avatar activity and marketplace behavior
The Roblox 2025 Replay / Digital Expression Report reported that users updated their avatars an average of 274 million times per day in 2025. The report also said Roblox Marketplace averaged 18.8 million daily visitors in the first half of 2025, up 17% year over year.
Marketplace activity indicates both scale and frequency. In the 2023 report, the 165 billion avatar-update figure rose 38% year over year, while digital fashion-item purchases rose 15%. The different growth rates suggest that customization activity and item purchasing are related but distinct behaviors: users can update an avatar repeatedly without each update representing a new purchase.
The 2025 report also connected virtual items with exploration beyond the avatar editor. More than 94% of respondents said they went on to explore a brand’s physical-world offerings after receiving freebies for their avatar. This is a reported survey result, not a forecast of sales conversion.
For social shopping, 41% of surveyed Gen Z Roblox users preferred shopping with friends in the physical world. Another 54% preferred shopping with friends in the digital world or enjoyed both equally. These responses indicate that social context remains important even when character customization and shopping happen in virtual spaces.
Brand influence and shopping behavior
Brand recognition is a recurring part of avatar design. In the Roblox 2023 Digital Expression, Fashion & Beauty Trends Report, three in four respondents said wearing digital fashions from a recognized brand was at least somewhat important. Forty-seven percent called recognized-brand digital fashion very or extremely important.
The 2025 report found that 70% of surveyed Gen Z Roblox users had worn branded digital fashion, and 60% said it was extremely or very important for their avatar to wear clothes from recognized brands. Sixty-nine percent said branded avatar items helped them try new styles and express themselves. Fifty-four percent said trying those items made them feel more positive about a brand.
Digital and physical purchasing were closely linked in the survey results. In 2023, 84% said that after wearing or trying on a brand’s item in virtual spaces, they would be at least somewhat likely to consider the brand in the physical world; 50% said they would be very or extremely likely. In 2025, 64% were extremely or very likely to consider a brand physically after wearing it virtually. The 2025 report also said 69% had physical purchasing decisions influenced by digital trends, and 88% used digital fashion as a preview tool before buying physical clothing.
Context affects whether branded options feel appropriate. Sixty-eight percent said branded style options must align with the theme of the game they were playing. The figure was 56% for role-playing experiences and 54% for fashion-focused experiences. For character creators, this suggests that a recognizable label is not the only design consideration: fit with the world, genre, and player activity also matters.
Character Creator software and asset benchmarks
The Reallusion Character Creator product page lists more than 130,000 premium 3D assets. It lists Character Creator 5 Standard at $299 and Character Creator 5 Deluxe at $479. Those are product-page prices associated with the cited offerings and should not be treated as an industry-wide average.
The product page also gives several geometry and texture benchmarks. The CC5 HD character base uses a 70K polycount at SubD 1 and supports 2K, 4K, and 8K material textures. The CC1, CC3, and CC3+ standard character base uses a 20K polycount. The standard game base character uses a 10K polycount with a reduced bone count, while the ActorBUILD character uses a 15K polycount and a single material for crowd rendering.
| Character Creator benchmark | Specification |
|---|---|
| Premium 3D assets | 130,000+ |
| CC5 Standard price | $299 |
| CC5 Deluxe price | $479 |
| CC5 HD base at SubD 1 | 70K polycount |
| Standard CC1, CC3, and CC3+ base | 20K polycount |
| Standard game base | 10K polycount |
| ActorBUILD character | 15K polycount |
The listed pipeline integrations include GoZ for ZBrush, CC Tools for Blender, CC AutoSetup for Unreal Engine and Unity, UDIM support for Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Marmoset Toolbag, Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, and NVIDIA Omniverse support. The breadth of that list reflects an intended connection between character creation, sculpting, clothing, texturing, rendering, and game-engine workflows.
Marketplace pricing and content demand
The Reallusion Marketplace Annual Report said the marketplace had more than 60,000 assets in 2022, with asset publication 10% higher than in 2021. The average marketplace order price was $18, or 1,800 DA points. Based on purchase behavior, Reallusion recommended prices around $15–$25, equivalent to 1,500–2,500 DA points.
Clothing was the largest stated content area in the report: 55%–60% of purchased Character Creator content in 2022 was related to clothes. Hair, Toon, and Cartoon were the most searched keywords in that marketplace report. Together, those figures point to sustained demand for visible identity components and stylized character assets.
The Reallusion 2024 annual report said 2D/3D character content sold through the Marketplace was supported by more than 2,000 digital content designers in Reallusion’s ecosystem. It also said Reallusion had more than 4 million members across 100 countries.
ActorCore, another part of the Reallusion ecosystem, contained more than 4,000 motion files in the 2024 annual report. Reallusion said its 2025 plan would add more than 500 motions and more than 300 high-quality assets to ActorCore. Those planned additions are targets described in the report, not completed totals.
The creator economy behind virtual characters
Avatar platforms depend on creators as well as users. The Roblox Annual Roblox Economic Impact Report said Roblox had 111.8 million average daily active users in the cited period. It also reported that Roblox creators earned over $1 billion globally through DevEx from March 2024 to March 2025, up more than 31% year over year.
The distribution of creator earnings was highly concentrated at the top. The top 1,000 Roblox developers earned an average of $820,000 in 2024, and that average was up more than 570% since 2019. The top 100 developers earned an average of $6 million in 2024, up more than 500% since 2019. The top 10 developers earned an average of $33.9 million in 2024, up more than 450% since 2019.
The same report said 75% of Roblox payouts over the past eight years went to creators in states without tech-focused economies. This geographic finding adds context to the creator economy: character and avatar platforms can distribute digital income beyond established technology hubs, even while the largest average earnings remain concentrated among the top developer groups.
For readers evaluating a character creator, the statistics describe three connected layers: people customize avatars to express identity, marketplaces monetize clothing and other visible assets, and creator ecosystems supply the content and tools that keep those experiences active. The specific results vary by platform, report, audience, and measurement period, so each figure is best read alongside its named source and date.