Good shapes for men

[Sophina Starchild]

Soooo my boyfriend is completely lost (and so am I!) on how to makeover his shape. I'm a pretty short avi (proportionately 5'1) and he doesn't want to look like a giant next to me.  Also...his shape just isn't what he wants. We're looking for somewhere that has good shapes for men that aren't giant.

 

Halp!

[Alwin Alcott]

it's very easy to adjust a shape yourself ( if i is a mod one) play with the sliders till it has wha you want.

If your bf has  mesh body/head the result may be disapointing because mesh bodies don't respond on all sliders.

Of course it's also possible to go buy a new shape. Most you find for sale are not small ones because what you call proportionaly is not in proportion of SL, everything is bigger here so also the avatars.

In my experience the shapes of Clef de peau and 7 deadly skins are a bit less tall, and i'm sure there are a lot more.

 

[apoapostolov]

The choice between standard model shape and a mesh body is a very conflicted one:

• Standard Bodies look significantly outdated compared to mesh bodies, especially for superior physique. If your boyfriend is going for average look and not muscle or model propotions, than he is best suited by standard body shape. You get the widest choice of clothing and at the lowest prices since the economy has shifted completely towards high margin mesh clothing compared to old standard body stock that has decreased in value.
  
  
• Mesh Bodies look amazing, and at Ultra Settings you may feel like you walked out of Poser or Daz3D, however once the honeymoon period of enjoying yourself is over, you find out that you are a victim of a technical limitations, scarcity and cutthroat competition between designers. First, there are huge limitations on what a mesh body can do at the moment. No idea if Project Bento will change that, but top of my list is that the head of most mesh bodies is mesh as welland has no support for talking and facial gestures. Some mesh designers go the extra mile to implement various mesh models that have facial expressions but then you're swapping model for model which is visible in the game. Scarcity of clothing and accessories comes next. You will be at the mercy of the mesh designer's existing network of clothing designers who support it. In this case few models, like Aesthetic, emerge victorious based on sheer scale of content, where others are incredibly under-supported. Some creatives actually feel they need to control the whole ecosystem of their models which means they are your only source of body, clothing and accessories. You absolutely do not want to be owned by someone else, but such is the case. This leads to the competition-removing tricks where some designers will deliberately make their models impossible to combine with other models, i.e. making the head part of the body so you can't use their head on another body mesh. And at the end, the long-term investment in a mesh body is going to baloon as you will be forced to pay for custom job like clothing and accessories, or begging creatives to make a version of existing stock for your model, and typically all good creatives are extremely busy or finnicky to work with. 

With so many negatives for using mesh bodies right now, you'd think people would be mad to sign up for this business model. Truth is, beauty is such a temptation, everyone gladly sells their soul to the devil for it. Myself included. But never forget what you sign for. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

My guide for proportions should work just as well on a male as one a female.

- START there, and once you get good proportions, just modify the parts you want to look different, and make the face whatever face fits your desired tastes.

[Aethelwine]

Pussycat's guide is really good and I recommend reading it through.

For me bought shapes are nearly always too tall or just weird shapes, but that doesn't matter because adjusting the key proportions is not that hard to do once you have followed a guide like Pussycat's by eye and quickly. What is important for me with a hsape is how the face works with the skin, because working on shape sliders is best done in only very small doses, it is so easy to adjust some settings that look fine at the time and then you change windlight and you look like you have become deformed. If you have a shape that makes your face look good then stick with it and use it as the starting point for the final shape, only adjust the head sliders with extreme care and conservatively.

Basically the settings to focus on initially are height, leg length, torso length, head size and hip length. The head wants to be somewhere between a seventh and an eight the height of the body. the crotch wants to be in the middle. The height wants to look right next to your partner. fiddle with the settings until it looks right and you have those proportions. Once you have the vertical dimensions right you can start fiddling with body width, leg and toso muscles and shoulder width, Shoulders should be roughly 3 heads wide. Do remember to make sure your avi's arms are long enough that they can wipe his butt, no one wants an avi that looks like they are stinky.

People in real world do vary from the ideal proportions to some extent, and it is after all your world your fantasy, so a certain amount of cartooning, to vary from ideal proportions is fine, but it does help to use the guide to know where you are varying from the norm and how much by.

[Sophina Starchild]

Thank you all so much! I think we will try to venture into making his shape up PussyCat's guide helped me a lot with mine back in the day