What's a Good, Functional Height for a Female Avatar?

[LittleMe Jewell]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

20 hours ago, AnyaJurelle said:

Only thing I can suggest is bring up your edit appearance thing, have a fiddle with the sliders while you're using whatever pose/furniture for posing, and then minimize it rather than 'save' or 'save as' - that way you can just close out of it when you're done without the hassle of having to re-do your sliders back to normal again.

 This is a really great idea! It had never occurred to me before that I don't need to save a tweaked shape! Thanks!

Though if you find yourself making roughly the same changes over and over for some pictures, I'd save the modified shape specifically for picture taking stuff.

[Coby Foden]

23 hours ago, Quinn Lysette said:

for a female avatar its 5.5 and lower nothing over that  for a guy its 5.5 to 5.8 nothin over or yr not real

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide

[callistanull]

My main avatar shape is 1.72m, and the others are very close to that. A little above average height but not unusual. It's been a decent balance of big enough that I don't feel tiny going around in most buildings, and small enough that I can reduce the size of some copy/mod stuff for modest LI reductions and space conservation.

[Amanda Dallin]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Though if you find yourself making roughly the same changes over and over for some pictures, I'd save the modified shape specifically for picture taking stuff.

Since I use a system head for sailing, I keep two different shapes and make different base outfits around them.  I have a base outfit for my normal neko look with my bento head. Body, head, neko ears and tail.  Basically everything i always wear.  Then I add other outfits that I've stored without the items on the body outfit.  Clothes hair and accessories.  I keep 2 other base outfit without the neko bits and one with and one without the head  for my 18th Century roleplay where nekos are frowned on.  Doing this i only have to update 2 or 3 outfits if the body or head comes out with an update. 

[Kia Kiyori]

2 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Though if you find yourself making roughly the same changes over and over for some pictures, I'd save the modified shape specifically for picture taking stuff.

I think Scylla was wanting to keep her avi at more realistic proportions for every day use though - but that taking photos using props can cause a few annoying headaches for those who don't want to be giants normally - hence the suggestion to minimize the appearance editor just while taking shots 

[LittleMe Jewell]

13 minutes ago, AnyaJurelle said:

I think Scylla was wanting to keep her avi at more realistic proportions for every day use though - but that taking photos using props can cause a few annoying headaches for those who don't want to be giants normally - hence the suggestion to minimize the appearance editor just while taking shots 

Yeah, but if you find that you have to adjust your shape for many of your photos, if you have one saved, you might just be able to pop on the new shape, take the picture and then revert to your normal shape.  And that might be faster than playing with the sliders every time you want to take a picture that needs the taller shape or may minimize how much slider manipulating you have to do for those photo shots.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I checked my height via multiple methods.  

Per Firestorm Edit Shape window, I stand 5.61 ft / 1.71 meters tall.

Per the LL Viewer Edit Shape window, I stand 5.30 ft / 1.61 meters tall.

When I use a prim to measure me from the base of my flat feet to the top of my head, I get a height of 1.68 meters tall - which is just about half way between the LL viewer and the Firestorm viewer.

[Coby Foden]

21 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I checked my height via multiple methods.  

Per Firestorm Edit Shape window, I stand 5.61 ft / 1.71 meters tall.

Per the LL Viewer Edit Shape window, I stand 5.30 ft / 1.61 meters tall.

When I use a prim to measure me from the base of my flat feet to the top of my head, I get a height of 1.68 meters tall - which is just about half way between the LL viewer and the Firestorm viewer.

• Firestorm and LL viewer difference: 1.71 m - 1.61 m = 0.20 m
(Firestorm just adds 0.20 m to the "agent height" , which is the one what LL viewer uses.)
• Firestorm and prim difference: 1.71 m - 1.68 m = 0.03 m
• LL viewer and prim difference: 1.68 m - 1.61 m = 0.07 m

Firestorm gets closer to the avatar's body height than LL viewer does. The problem in getting the body height accurately is that the fixed 0.20 m addition to the agent height is just a rough estimate how much the body height differs from the agent height. The difference between agent height and body height is not static fixed number, it varies from body to body depending on body proportions. And determining how much the difference varies from body to body is impossible to calculate.

(I remember reading in one bug report that the avatar agent height is calculated in the viewer code with certain bone lengths. And it seemed that it's very entangled code all over the place. LL didn't want to touch it in fear that it would break existing content if they did. The problem is also that the agent height knows nothing about the avatar's mesh body height. So fixing the agent height to be closer to the body height actually wouldn't be a solution to find the exact body height.)

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 hours ago, Coby Foden said:

• Firestorm and LL viewer difference: 1.71 m - 1.61 m = 0.20 m
(Firestorm just adds 0.20 m to the "agent height" , which is the one what LL viewer uses.)
• Firestorm and prim difference: 1.71 m - 1.68 m = 0.03 m
• LL viewer and prim difference: 1.68 m - 1.61 m = 0.07 m

Firestorm gets closer to the avatar's body height than LL viewer does. The problem in getting the body height accurately is that the fixed 0.20 m addition to the agent height is just a rough estimate how much the body height differs from the agent height. The difference between agent height and body height is not static fixed number, it varies from body to body depending on body proportions. And determining how much the difference varies from body to body is impossible to calculate.

(I remember reading in one bug report that the avatar agent height is calculated in the viewer code with certain bone lengths. And it seemed that it's very entangled code all over the place. LL didn't want to touch it in fear that it would break existing content if they did. The problem is also that the agent height knows nothing about the avatar's mesh body height. So fixing the agent height to be closer to the body height actually wouldn't be a solution to find the exact body height.)

Given how speculative and inaccurate all of this is, one wonders whether the best option might not be to simply not give an estimated height at all, rather than pretend that the viewer can do so accurately. And the variation between the LL viewer and prim height is pretty substantial, after all.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

5 hours ago, AnyaJurelle said:

I think Scylla was wanting to keep her avi at more realistic proportions for every day use though - but that taking photos using props can cause a few annoying headaches for those who don't want to be giants normally - hence the suggestion to minimize the appearance editor just while taking shots 

Yeah, but if you find that you have to adjust your shape for many of your photos, if you have one saved, you might just be able to pop on the new shape, take the picture and then revert to your normal shape.  And that might be faster than playing with the sliders every time you want to take a picture that needs the taller shape or may minimize how much slider manipulating you have to do for those photo shots.

I think I'll be doing essentially a combination of these methods. I've created a "larger" shape that is essentially identical in terms of proportion to my default one (with a few minor differences that are owing to the limits of the sliders, esp. for the arms), and I'll go to this when it seems appropriate to do so. But I've also needed on occasion to make small adjustments to things like hand size in particular contexts, and for that, Anya's idea is a really great one.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 hours ago, Amanda Dallin said:

Since I use a system head for sailing, I keep two different shapes and make different base outfits around them.  I have a base outfit for my normal neko look with my bento head. Body, head, neko ears and tail.  Basically everything i always wear.  Then I add other outfits that I've stored without the items on the body outfit.  Clothes hair and accessories.  I keep 2 other base outfit without the neko bits and one with and one without the head  for my 18th Century roleplay where nekos are frowned on.  Doing this i only have to update 2 or 3 outfits if the body or head comes out with an update. 

Good system! If I understand you correctly, I'm doing something that's a bit similar: I have a folder with all of the common basic elements that I use for the vast majority of my outfits -- mostly HUDs, the alpha layer for my system body, most of my hairs with associated HUDs, and my (now) two shapes -- and then the individual bits that are peculiar to each outfit in separate folders that are named for each base outfit. Some variations on outfits (for instance, same top with different pants or footwear) use the same folder: I just mix and match different elements from that base file when I create an outfit.

[Marianne Little]

In terms of realistic and functional, I struggle more with how my avatar look in houses and furniture. I am too old in SL to adapt a new camera angle so in the default camera position, it is a balance between ceiling height and height of windows and doors. I like a bit higher ceiling, but I really don't like it when doorknobs are placed as high as my nipples, if you get what I'm saying.

A functional height for me is 6' or 1,8 - 1,9 m. I have found houses and furniture who fit well together. I am 5'95 in front of the house, and it works because it is a manor style build. Manors are bigger that average houses. But 6'10 would look better in the furniture. I can resize everything down because most of what I have is mod, but is it realistic to do it with all things? I buy much from the same designer and it is more convenient to change myself.

I know some people have a different view, that they should never adjust their avatar to match SL furniture. They are entitled to their opinion, but I take the easy way out and change 1 thing, myself, instead of everything else. Low quality photos, sorry. I took them on medium graphics because I don't have time to change to the photo setting with ultra, shadows and all that.

Entrance with 5'95 avatar:

Furniture with 5'95 avatar:

Furniture with 6'10 avatar:

[Conifer Dada]

I go for a realistic height, so I'm 5ft 5ins, or 1.65m, as set on the sliders.  I see plenty of other female avatars about the same size as me or smaller, although there are many who are taller - some much taller!   Then there's that slight discrepancy between the avatar scale and the prim building scale to worry about - or not worry about. 

I a good piece of guidance is to be conscious of scale and choose a size that you would want your avatar to be in real life, even if it's a furry or robot.  To put it another way, if you intend your female avatar to be a 7 foot giantess, that's fine.  But if she's meant to be a regular size but you made her big to fill the screen, with no thought of scale, then maybe it would be a good idea to learn about the camera settings in the debug menu.

Although this topic is about female avatars, what I say here applies equally to male avatars.  

Edited December 18, 2018 by Conifer Dada

[Marianne Little]

20 hours ago, Conifer Dada said:

I go for a realistic height, so I'm 5ft 5ins, or 1.65m, as set on the sliders.  I see plenty of other female avatars about the same size as me or smaller, although there are many who are taller - some much taller!   Then there's that slight discrepancy between the avatar scale and the prim building scale to worry about - or not worry about. 

I a good piece of guidance is to be conscious of scale and choose a size that you would want your avatar to be in real life, even if it's a furry or robot.  To put it another way, if you intend your female avatar to be a 7 foot giantess, that's fine.  But if she's meant to be a regular size but you made her big to fill the screen, with no thought of scale, then maybe it would be a good idea to learn about the camera settings in the debug menu.

Although this topic is about female avatars, what I say here applies equally to male avatars.  

There is always one who come in and use derogatory words as "gigantess" in every thread about size.

[ellestones]

On 12/18/2018 at 4:25 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

... when we used to go dancing, he'd shorter himself a little).

this is what I have found with my male friends. They would rather shorten themselves than ask me to make myself taller when dancing

with a lot of fitted mesh these days Is not as much of an issue, but there is still an issue, to make ourselves taller with the height slider. Back in the prim days this was a pretty fraught thing to do. Prim and later sculpt everything attachments often needed to be adjusted. So the men would say they would shorten because lots less (or none) attachments for them to adjust. They rather be dancing than stand there for 20 minutes while I hitch all my stuff up  in the middle of the dance floor 

most men from those days just keep on doing this today.  Because thru experience they know that while our bodies look great at our normal height, then we can turn into skinny giraffe when we lengthen our height and not adjust every other slider to compensate. Which if don't adjust also then will I start to fret, and my dance partner starts to sob quietly to himself

 

[Blush Bravin]

A big part of the reason we have an abundance of avatars with much too short arms is this need to make very tall avatars. There is no way to get the female arms long enough even setting the slider to 100 if you make the avatar as tall as possible. It's just not possible to make a well proportioned avatar over a certain height. Even now with avatar heights generally becoming more realistic the short arm syndrome remains because people got so used to seeing short arms on avatars and now think normal length arms are too long. The reason people started making huge avatars in the first place was to overcome the camera angle problem, but it's really super easy to fix the camera angle so you see things from your avatar's perspective instead of hovering high above your head.

I keep my avatars on the average range leaning towards slightly taller than average at 6 feet typically. Even at that height I still have issues with some furniture and doors. I won't adjust my height to fit over-sized furniture or buildings. If I can't mod the furniture/building then it's getting deleted. As a retired art teacher, it's nearly impossible for me to just ignore badly proportioned anything when it comes to my avatar or my home. 

[Rhonda Huntress]

9 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

There is always one who come in and use derogatory words as "gigantess" in every thread about size.

I prefer the term Glamazon.

 

[Conifer Dada]

9 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

There is always one who come in and use derogatory words as "gigantess" in every thread about size.

I can't see that 'giantess' is derogatory - certainly not in relation to avatars in a virtual world. 😄 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Conifer Dada

[Coby Foden]

4 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

Even now with avatar heights generally becoming more realistic the short arm syndrome remains because people got so used to seeing short arms on avatars and now think normal length arms are too long

I still remember when years back for the first time I made my avatar realistically proportioned. Carefully observing how real people bodies look and then trying to make my avatar as close as possible to resemble real human proportions. Well, at first I felt like orangutan 🦍 with my realistic length long arms. However after few days that feeling went away and got used to it. My eyes learned to see how real people actually look, and that look is excellent and right on avatars too.

People should pay more attention how real people actually look. Always carefully observing just the avatars will get the eyes accustomed with something what is not quite right.
Surely there are also people who actually like and specifically aim at something in their human avatars which does not follow RL looks and proportions. (But it looks so wrong! 😉)

[Skell Dagger]

17 minutes ago, Coby Foden said:

Surely there are also people who actually like and specifically aim at something in their human avatars which does not follow RL looks and proportions. (But it looks so wrong! 😉)

But it's right for them.

Judge as you will and if you like. But 'too tall people' is something that has been banged on about incessantly in SL for years. Those of us who happen to like our avatars being tall - not because we're contrary or are thumbing our noses at "how real people actually look", but because we like the way that it looks on us - are quite used by now to being told that there's something wrong with us.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Skell Dagger

[LittleMe Jewell]

Super tall only sort of irks me and really only because I suddenly feel like a child standing next to them.  I simply handle it by typically not standing directly next to someone that is lots taller than me. 

The only think that really gets my goat here is the super out of proportion bodies -- things like arms too short for body or head too tiny for body and stuff like that.  Unless, of course, they are intentionally wanting to be a human T-Rex.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

But it's right for them.

Judge as you will and if you like. But 'too tall people' is something that has been banged on about incessantly in SL for years. Those of us who happen to like our avatars being tall - not because we're contrary or are thumbing our noses at "how real people actually look", but because we like the way that it looks on us - are quite used by now to being told that there's something wrong with us.

Leave it to me to stumble blindly into another contentious subject. Before I started this thread, the only person I'd run across who was really vociferous about avatar height was Jo Yardley, in connection with her Berlin sim.

The first time I gave avatar height any serious thought was in 2013, when I was shaping my alt. My assumption up to that point had always been that, if everyone was taller, then we were all to scale, more or less, with each other, and our heights in cm were really just so many arbitrary numbers.

But, for reasons that I don't fully recall -- probably because I was thinking and writing about virtual body image -- I decided to resize my alt to realistic height and proportion. I discovered two things: first, that it was pretty much impossible to have a realistically proportional body unless you scaled down, and second, that I was actually pretty uncomfortable (I'm not sure I can even tell you why) going to social venues, like clubs, and being anywhere from one to two heads shorter than the vast majority of other people there. So I ended up compromising, and being a somewhat shorter "giantess" among other "giantesses."

To be entirely candid, how my body looks beside others matters to me. Probably it shouldn't, but if I am being honest with myself, it does. It was the initial (although not the final) reason why I decided to go mesh when I came back a few months ago. And my sense of how comfortable I am going to feel with a smaller body is, to a great degree, going to depend upon my perception of myself in the context of the bodies of those I associate with.

BUT . . . in final analysis, I like the look of my avatar better when it's realistically proportioned, and I can't do that properly at a height over about 180-190 cms. Ultimately, the proportion rather than the height is what matters to me. So I'll probably live with the discomfort of feeling really "short," if that is the requisite price to be paid for the look that I prefer.

It is, I think, important to recognize that the choices we make about our body shapes are personal aesthetic choices -- like preferring a particular hairstyle, or dress colour, or type of footwear. And those are individual choices that are, appropriately, made by each of us as individuals. I will "judge" them, in the same way that each and every one of us judges what we see others wearing in both RL and SL, but I don't feel the need to articulate that aloud to them, nor is it the same as wanting them to conform to my sense of style, anymore than I'd be happy with them wanting me to conform to their preferred paradigms for avatar height.

I guess we'll all just have to learn to get along, each in our very different way.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Scylla Rhiadra
Removing a lot of utterly gratuituous personal opinions about what I like. They're not relevant, and they are JUST my opinions.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

36 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

only because I suddenly feel like a child standing next to them

This.

But that's their choice, and mine, as I'm sure Lil would agree.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Coby Foden said:

I still remember when years back for the first time I made my avatar realistically proportioned. Carefully observing how real people bodies look and then trying to make my avatar as close as possible to resemble real human proportions. Well, at first I felt like orangutan 🦍 with my realistic length long arms. However after few days that feeling went away and got used to it. My eyes learned to see how real people actually look, and that look is excellent and right on avatars too.

People should pay more attention how real people actually look. Always carefully observing just the avatars will get the eyes accustomed with something what is not quite right.
Surely there are also people who actually like and specifically aim at something in their human avatars which does not follow RL looks and proportions. (But it looks so wrong! 😉)

There are two ways to think of "realistic" arm lengths. The one most used among the "realistic proportions" set is that the arm span equals height.

Another rule of thumb is that the arm length should place the wrist at the crotch height with arms at the sides - in other words, it's only in relation to the body and not the legs. This also matches human proportions, but it allows legs to be lengthened compared to human proportions. This is the way fashion illustrations are often done (often the standard is ten heads high instead of 8 heads, with the extra two heads of height used to stretch the legs.) This is also the way Barbie is proportioned. 

[Coby Foden]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

But it's right for them.

Judge as you will and if you like. But 'too tall people' is something that has been banged on about incessantly in SL for years. Those of us who happen to like our avatars being tall - not because we're contrary or are thumbing our noses at "how real people actually look", but because we like the way that it looks on us - are quite used by now to being told that there's something wrong with us.

Skell, I wasn't talking about the height of an avatar. What I said was avatar body proportions. For male avatar it's possible to be tall and have good proportions. For female avatar it's impossible to be very tall and have good body proportions. I assume that you too like good body proportions, right? Looking at your snapshots of your avatar I do get that impression.

The thing is that weird body proportions do look strange and thus look wrong on human avatar. At least for me.
But if somebody likes it, then go for it, disregard what others think about it. Everybody have their likes and dislikes.
- - - -
If I wanted to say something about height, it would be that SL looks quite weird because the avatar heights differ extremely much. There is no coherent scaling of things because of that fact. We can blame LL that in the very beginning they didn't pay enough attention for consistent scaling of things in SL. And now we have the situation what we have now.