What is the right size for hand?

[bebejee]

My avi hands looks large and crude,  is there a right size for it or just adjust it based on visual like whatever looks right.

[Pussycat Catnap]

From:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/

 

Next comes hand size. One of the major ‘lol’ issues with SL men is tiny hands… How can you tell a noob shape or noob shape maker – look at the hands first. In my screenshots I’m taking off my furry paws for a moment here so you can see this how most of you will deal with it:

You will want your hand from the base of your palm to the tips of your fingers to be the same size as the distance between your chin and midway between your brows and ‘hairline’. I’m guessing my hairline on this one. Again men have slightly thicker hands and women slightly daintier – but use extreme care in deviating here: the hand size slider doesn’t adjust for thick / width / muscle, just size all around. A little bit goes a long way.

Note the comment about thicker versus daintier - this is why all avatars in SL have MAN HANDS... there is no 'hand muscle / thickness' slider... so no matter how big or small you go, it will still look mannish. A big mistake many women make is thinking female hands are smaller. They're not so much smaller overall, as smaller in the muscle / palm / width. The shape is different, and SL doesn't let you fix that.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If you want to wear things like sculpted fingernails, ring sets, etc. then most of those generally come with linked sets preset for hands sized to 10, 20, and 30.

Rigged mesh will fit all hands.

 

[Syo Emerald]

I always use my own body to messure from view how everything has to be proportioned to look realistic. I look how far my arms go, how much longer my legs are compared to my upper body and so on. Same goes with hands. Of course, that method only works if you have a average body and if your avatar over all looks realistic shaped. If you already have the head of a peacock, the hips of a horse and the legs of a giraffe, human hands will look odd :cattongue:

[Penny Patton]

And unless someone seriously studies proportion, people can have a skewed perception of their own body.

For example, most people don't realize that their arms reach all the way down to mid thigh, halfway between their hip and their knees. This skewed perception is one reason why so many avatars have such short arms.

 

Like Pussycat says, your hand should be about the size of your face but this brings up the importance of knowing general human proportions. If your head is too small, your hands will be too small when you use it to determine their size! (The average adult is 7.5 heads tall but 8 heads is considered the "artistic ideal" and is often used to portray more attractive body types.) Both Pussycat and myself have written articles to help people with that issue.

  Of course, not all human bodies are completely identical but it's important to remember that you can achieve a large variet of bodyshapes while remaining within these general guidelines, you see this every day in real life. With few stand-out exceptions, everyone has proportions that would fall within these averages. In the link above is a link to a longer version of the same article which expands on human proportion, explaining how you can work with proportion to achieve specific body types.

[Syo Emerald]

And thats why I take a look, instead of guessing, Penny

I stand infront of a mirror and pay attention how far my arms can reach, where my hands are, when I stand relaxed, how much my hands cover, when I place them on my face and whatever else helps to get a feeling.

I'm pretty sure that my avatar now does not fall into the category of the monsteravatars. She is a bit bigger than the average woman, but that is because she is supossed to have an average size compared to the avatars surounding her. I also don't carry those watermelon-lolas with me and have no need for a butt that could work as a table.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

And unless someone seriously studies proportion, people can have a skewed perception of their own body.

For example, most people don't realize that their arms reach all the way down to mid thigh, halfway between their hip and their knees. This skewed perception is one reason why so many avatars have such short arms.

 

Like Pussycat says, your hand should be about the size of your face but this brings up the importance of knowing general human proportions. If your head is too small, your hands will be too small when you use it to determine their size! (The average adult is 7.5 heads tall but 8 heads is considered the "artistic ideal" and is often used to portray more attractive body types.)

 

Both Pussycat and myself have written articles to help people with that issue.

  Of course, not all human bodies are completely identical

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OMG yeah...

A question you can ask a lot of people about their avatars... "hey um, how do you wipe yourself there...?"

- most SL avatars can't reach the goods, front or back... which means if SL had 'smell', the place would reek pretty bad right now... 10 years of no wiping...

That said it wasn't until I started wondering how to fix the T-Rex that I consciously measured my own arm length... and realized that the fingertips actually do go down to about mid-thigh.

 

BTW, the easy way to measure your arm setting is to take a prim that's your height, and rotate it sideways while in a T-Pose: from right hand fingertips to left hand fingertips should be as far apart as you are tall - but in SL this also assumes your body width and shoulders are already correct (and my few attempts at a male shape have taught me that their shoulders / chest width seem almost cartoon level of incorrect, and I've not yet managed to fix it). Still, its a start and a serious eye-opener for how dramatically short most SL shapes have set the arms.

I also find than a hand size below 30 is on almost any shape very likely to be too small. But looking at it, the 30 will seem big until you get used to it. Especially because the hands in SL are poorly shaped (The only reason I don't use SLINK mesh hands is that my AO makes a LOT of finger motions. Otherwise I'd recommend them to anyone).

One thing to remember about RL proportional differences. While we aren't all identical, we're probablly all less than 5% off on any element; not accounting for injuries / deformities (*). Very tiny changes in proportion on a RL person can be visual striking.

 

I'm always forgetting the head size one is 7.5. I keep thinking 6.5 to 7, when its actually 7.5 to 8 as Penny notes. Even still in SL its common to see 10 to 12, or 5 to 6... extremes on either end.

 

(*) I know that's not politcally correct, but what is the polite way of saying 'deformity'?

[Studio09]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

...

A question you can ask a lot of people about their avatars... "hey um, how do you wipe yourself there...?"

- most SL avatars can't reach the goods, front or back... which means if SL had 'smell', the place would reek pretty bad right now... 10 years of no wiping...

...

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:smileyvery-happy: