Roblox launches custom terrain materials for published games
Custom Terrain Materials and initial terrain optimizations are now fully supported. Enable Expanded Terrain and test streaming behavior before updating live places.
Roblox’s October 22, 2026 announcement moves Custom Terrain Materials and initial rendering, storage, and delivery improvements out of Early Access. Developers can now publish places with up to 62 custom terrain materials, playable by anyone on Roblox. Early Access places are accessible according to their publication status.
Enable and verify the migration
According to Roblox, activation requires updating and restarting Studio, opening the place, and selecting Workspace. Change Expanded Terrain from Default to Enabled, then save, close, and reopen the place. Early Access participants must also re-enable the setting; otherwise, custom materials may appear as grass.
Team Create places need an additional pause: exit and wait about 15 seconds before reopening, because the restart prompt alone does not apply the changes. Places never saved to Roblox will not reopen automatically; select them from the start screen.
Roblox says the optimizations reduce terrain file size and improve streaming and loading. Its reported benchmark showed CPU memory overhead falling by 90% and meshing latency by 45%. Those figures describe one benchmark, not a promised result for your game.
Test terrain before release
Roblox lists remaining limitations. Custom terrain slots do not yet honor Material Variant custom physical properties. With streaming enabled and a small streaming radius, terrain less than 16 voxels thick may disappear on clients or in playmode. Adding thickness can resolve this; Roblox says thinning terrain under ExpandedTerrain saves little or no memory.
Our recommendation is to test a saved copy this week. Compare loading and memory before and after enabling Expanded Terrain, then inspect thin terrain during streamed play. If using Roblox’s supplied thickening script, preserve a backup: the announcement warns that large terrain writes have unreliable undo, repeated runs add more thickness, and caves may cause difficulties.