Scaling avi?

[kiramanell]

Hi. Just bought a new Maitreya body and Catwa head. Plus a wonderful new Island Residence. Instead of skipping on the anims, I was planning on actually using them, this time. Turns out my avi is actually not tall enough for the kitchen counter. So, what is the best way to scale an avi? I don't want my avi scaled beyond what's normal for a human, but I fear any sort of scaling will almost immediately do that. And I don't want to wind up with an enormous freak head either, like Elaine (see below), LOL.  

Thanks for any tips you might have.

 

 

[Maitimo]

Most furniture is built MUCH too big for normal avatars; your best option is to scale down the kitchen, if it can be modified. If not, it may be time to go shopping again.

Avatars are already mostly oversized and they don't scale up well if you try to make them even taller. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

Most furniture is built MUCH too big for normal avatars; your best option is to scale down the kitchen, if it can be modified. If not, it may be time to go shopping again.

Avatars are already mostly oversized and they don't scale up well if you try to make them even taller. 

Yeah, what Matty says.

My avatar comes in (as measured by a prim) at 1.8 metres, which is not particularly short (you'd have thought?), but can make me look like a 13 year old on some furniture. An additional problem, if you are producing a proportional look, is that your arms will be longer, and your head larger (relative to the rest of your avi) than the standard sized avatar, and that can produce some problems with animations, with hands disappearing into your chest or face.

There's not a lot you can do about the animations (although for static poses you can get a HUD that will allow you to adjust those to some degree), and it's a simple inescapable fact that most sims are built for larger avatars.

But for your own place, always make sure that the furniture and accessories are mod, so that you can downsize them as needed. I actually do this with my skyboxes and houses too: I generally shrink these down to about 2/3 of their original size. That too can be a pain sometimes: some objects are "mod" but can't be shrunk down because they contain parts that are already at 0.01m, which is as small (or thin) as they can go. That's frequently the case for windows, for instance. What I do is go through the house or skybox, painfully and slowly, prim by prim, to find the bits that can't be shrunk, and increase their width/size to 0.015m. That means that they will shrink down again to 0.01m at exactly 2/3 of their original size. If that makes sense.

[Nalates Urriah]

I agree with Matty.

Unfortunately there is no overall scale setting in Appearance. So, changing size is a bit tedious. It is a balancing act between head size and height.

You can read Penny Patton's rants on scale and size in SL to get an idea of how best to size your avatar. See Milk & Cream.

There are tools to help you size your avatar. (Mine) Most of these are guides to use with the Appearance panel. The idea is to get things in the right proportions.

Also, the viewers have a height mistake in appearance. You can set a prim to the height you want, then set the same height in Appearance and you'll see the avatar is considerably taller. I think Firestorm fixed that, but I forget. The Lindens see it as a legacy thing and won't change it. Once you are aware of it you can compensate. Penny explains it in some of her articles.

[kiramanell]

52 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yeah, what Matty says.

My avatar comes in (as measured by a prim) at 1.8 metres, which is not particularly short (you'd have thought?), but can make me look like a 13 year old on some furniture. An additional problem, if you are producing a proportional look, is that your arms will be longer, and your head larger (relative to the rest of your avi) than the standard sized avatar, and that can produce some problems with animations, with hands disappearing into your chest or face.

There's not a lot you can do about the animations (although for static poses you can get a HUD that will allow you to adjust those to some degree), and it's a simple inescapable fact that most sims are built for larger avatars.

But for your own place, always make sure that the furniture and accessories are mod, so that you can downsize them as needed. I actually do this with my skyboxes and houses too: I generally shrink these down to about 2/3 of their original size. That too can be a pain sometimes: some objects are "mod" but can't be shrunk down because they contain parts that are already at 0.01m, which is as small (or thin) as they can go. That's frequently the case for windows, for instance. What I do is go through the house or skybox, painfully and slowly, prim by prim, to find the bits that can't be shrunk, and increase their width/size to 0.015m. That means that they will shrink down again to 0.01m at exactly 2/3 of their original size. If that makes sense.

 

Thanks, Scylla!  The kitchen is part of an all-new shiny mesh beach residence. Scaling the kitchen block may not work too well (as it's all baked-shadows, for one), as it has many cooking anims in it too, that rez foodstuffz and appliances in the right spot. But I might actually try and tweak it, so the counter will be a bit lower. Or I may just have to learn to live with floating a bit. 🤩 (We're talking ca. 10-15cm). Thx again.

As for your avi, no, I wouldn't have guessed 1.8m. Probably a bit shorter. Matty is right, though, and not just about kitchen: furniture/homes scaling is often (way) off. And I usually accept that; but my OCD usually doesn't.  

[Maitimo]

2 hours ago, kiramanell said:

 

Thanks, Scylla!  The kitchen is part of an all-new shiny mesh beach residence. Scaling the kitchen block may not work too well (as it's all baked-shadows, for one), as it has many cooking anims in it too, that rez foodstuffz and appliances in the right spot. But I might actually try and tweak it, so the counter will be a bit lower. Or I may just have to learn to live with floating a bit. 🤩 (We're talking ca. 10-15cm). Thx again.

As for your avi, no, I wouldn't have guessed 1.8m. Probably a bit shorter. Matty is right, though, and not just about kitchen: furniture/homes scaling is often (way) off. And I usually accept that; but my OCD usually doesn't.  

Baked shadows should scale down as you shrink the object, as long as you have "stretch textures" selected.  However if the kitchen rezzes items they are likely to be rezzed out-of-position. On the other hand, you'd be able to select the food item and move it down a bit once it's rezzed.

And just to add, my avatar is (purposefully) just over 7' tall (don't ask me what that is in metres, I'm British) and most furniture is too big even for me.

[kiramanell]

4 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

Baked shadows should scale down as you shrink the object, as long as you have "stretch textures" selected.  However if the kitchen rezzes items they are likely to be rezzed out-of-position. On the other hand, you'd be able to select the food item and move it down a bit once it's rezzed.

And just to add, my avatar is (purposefully) just over 7' tall (don't ask me what that is in metres, I'm British) and most furniture is too big even for me.

 

7 feet?! Yikes, that's 2.13m, I think. Still possible for a human, but I think I'd look weird being that tall. Like I said to Scylla, I hate clipping into the kitchen counter, so I should then just prefer floating a bit over the former.

Would really be nice, if animations in SL could have our body parts respond to the underlying physics of the object (like underarms being liften high enough to reach the kitchen counter, or my hands not clipping thru my dress). But that might open an entire different can of worms.

[Rhonda Huntress]

It would be nice if objects were created to a realistic scale to start with.

[kiramanell]

5 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

It would be nice if objects were created to a realistic scale to start with.

 

Not sure why they aren't, really. Camera pos, maybe? Still, without animations conforming to the actual physics of an object, accommodating for different avi heights would still remain problematic, even when kitchens and such were scaled properly.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

Not sure why they aren't, really. Camera pos, maybe? Still, without animations conforming to the actual physics of an object, accommodating for different avi heights would still remain problematic, even when kitchens and such were scaled properly.

I've sometimes wondered why those producing animations and poses don't make variant versions for different sizes. Clothing makers do this, after all.

[kiramanell]

11 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But for your own place, always make sure that the furniture and accessories are mod, so that you can downsize them as needed. I actually do this with my skyboxes and houses too: I generally shrink these down to about 2/3 of their original size. That too can be a pain sometimes: some objects are "mod" but can't be shrunk down because they contain parts that are already at 0.01m, which is as small (or thin) as they can go. That's frequently the case for windows, for instance. What I do is go through the house or skybox, painfully and slowly, prim by prim, to find the bits that can't be shrunk, and increase their width/size to 0.015m. That means that they will shrink down again to 0.01m at exactly 2/3 of their original size. If that makes sense.

 

I'm such a moonbrain, LOL. In this case, the kitchen island in question is actually designed (on purpose?) with a rim below, so you can lower it a bit.  I may need to adjust the kitchen stools too, as food is getting rezzed too high now when I sit on one. Kitchen sink (to the right) is going to be harder, as there are baked shadows on the wall. I may need to get creative on that one. 😛 

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by kiramanell

[Nalates Urriah]

On 8/8/2019 at 3:52 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I've sometimes wondered why those producing animations and poses don't make variant versions for different sizes. Clothing makers do this, after all.

Some animation makers do make animations for different sizes. The 1.80m avatar height size is sort of considered medium. Some AOs allow you to pick which size-set of animations to use.

At best these sizes just get 'closer'. If you create a proportionally correct avatar and allow for the viewer error in height, the animations can be nice. But, I haven't seen any I consider perfect.

A common feature request in the JIRA is to make animations scalable so they will fit the avatar whatever size. Apparently that is easier asked than done.

[Cackle Amore]

On 8/8/2019 at 5:46 PM, kiramanell said:

 

Not sure why they aren't, really. Camera pos, maybe? Still, without animations conforming to the actual physics of an object, accommodating for different avi heights would still remain problematic, even when kitchens and such were scaled properly.

That's possibly a reason, I think Penny also had made some blog posts bout that. It's kind of a bit high up behind us by default, and so people probably just built to accommodate that without much thought, and similarly, old default avatars were a bit oversized and it just kind of stuck that way.

[kiramanell]

On 8/9/2019 at 12:52 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I've sometimes wondered why those producing animations and poses don't make variant versions for different sizes. Clothing makers do this, after all.

 

All y'all were right: ca. 1.8m seems to be the sweet spot for many animations. Strange indeed anims can't be scaled, though. I get that they're mocapped and  everything, but they were already scaled down when ported from real life, right?! So, what prevents them from being scaled when inside an avi/piece of furniture/kitchen, etc? (Along with the object they're in)

[Alyona Su]

Avatar height, to my 13-years of understanding, is measured from Avatar Center (approximately the pelvis) to the bottom of feet. So unless your legs can change length dynamically, it won't happen. This also is why people with very short legs (SL Kid, for example) will appear too low (under ground) on an adult-sized pose and people with over-long legs (a.k.a. unrealistic giants) will float too high above the ground on a ground-sit, for example.

[Resi Pfeffer]

1 hour ago, kiramanell said:

Strange indeed anims can't be scaled, though.

A animation itself is just a pile of commands how and when your bones are being moved within a defined time span.
Like a movie... 30 consecutive pics a second make a 1 second video clip.

There is nothing you can scale (according to the avatar size) on a animation. Imagine a kissing scene - He is a giant, she is short. The only way to "fix" it is to attach a beer crate to her feet and adjust her hover height.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Resi Pfeffer
typo

[Scylla Rhiadra]

17 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

A animation itself is just a pile of commandos how and when your bones are being moved within a defined time span.
Like a movie... 30 consecutive pics a second make a 1 second video clip.

There is nothing you can scale (according to the avatar size) on a animation. Imagine a kissing scene - He is a giant, she is short. The only way to "fix" it is to attach a beer crate to her feet and adjust her hover height.

You're using the instance, however, of what are really two animations not working properly in sync. What I find more annoying, personally (in part because I am hardly ever on couples poses) are instances where a hand disappears inside the body or head, or two hands clip, or a leg doesn't sit properly, because the avatar's proportions are non-standard.

I get that this would be a remarkably difficult or possibly impossible problem to fix dynamically, with scripts or whatever. But it should be possible to produce variant poses or animations for differently proportioned avatars, just as mesh clothing makers use "standard sizing" sometimes, or produce different models for different mesh bodies.

Which is not to say that they'd find it worthwhile doing it: more and more, I'm seeing standard sizing and different versions of clothing for different mesh bodies disappearing, as clearly a lot of merchants have decided that it's faster and easier to focus on the one, or two, or three most popular bodies.

[Resi Pfeffer]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

You're using the instance, however, of what are really two animations not working properly in sync. What I find more annoying, personally (in part because I am hardly ever on couples poses) are instances where a hand disappears inside the body or head, or two hands clip, or a leg doesn't sit properly, because the avatar's proportions are non-standard.

I get that this would be a remarkably difficult or possibly impossible problem to fix dynamically, with scripts or whatever. But it should be possible to produce variant poses or animations for differently proportioned avatars, just as mesh clothing makers use "standard sizing" sometimes, or produce different models for different mesh bodies.

Which is not to say that they'd find it worthwhile doing it: more and more, I'm seeing standard sizing and different versions of clothing for different mesh bodies disappearing, as clearly a lot of merchants have decided that it's faster and easier to focus on the one, or two, or three most popular bodies.

Something remotely similar is already done by a few bdsm furniture, as much as i know. When you sit on, your avatar gets wildly shaken for a few seconds and after you seem to be better aligned than before. But thats just about how you are placed on that bed/chair/device.
Doing the same with avatar animations itself would require a script whats able to alter SL animations live and on the fly, depending on the avatar shape. As much as i know, there is no way to do that.
Would could work though, is to upload 3 slightly different versions of the same animation (Its not an easy task to create one single animation, dont even want to think about multiple ones) and then a script selects the one what fits best for the given avatar height.
But still, then the clever script doesnt know how the other avatar looks like (imaging a hugging scene), and the arms of the avatar still will poke through the back of the other.

What cant be done technically, has to be fixed by roleplay

[Alyona Su]

26 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

because the avatar's proportions are non-standard.

MOST animations are this way because the animator's avatar is non-standard proportions (i.e.: SL Default) - arms are too short in most cases (in bowling-pin pose, the middle finger should come to the halfway point of the thigh - SL default stops just below the hip = way to short, so if you are proper, hands go though hips, etc.). On top of that, the current SL Fad is the overweight or over-size shapes, which the animation is not designed for, so yeah, not only is avatar hight not dynamically adjustable, neither is any other part of an animation.

The good news is that newer animations from Vista, Tuty's, Daiz Papp and a few others are now taking these into account: properly proportioned arms and legs and some AO kits are available in standard and "curvy" (a.k.a: overweight) shaped versions, also. I've just recently purchased a newer Tuty's because my hands rest perfectly on my hips in those stands and walks, arms don't go through my chest when raising up to fiddle with my hair and even them, my hand doesn;t go through my head. My arm length is set to 85 on the slider of my main (Belleza Venus) - on my Maitreya is has to go all the way to 100 (!) on the slider before it looks proper.

Edited August 14, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

MOST animations are this way because the animator's avatar is non-standard proportions (i.e.: SL Default) - arms are too short in most cases (in bowling-pin pose, the middle finger should come to the halfway point of the thigh - SL default stops just below the hip = way to short, so if you are proper, hands go though hips, etc.).

Yes, exactly. By "non-standard," I meant by SL standards. My problems, other than the height issue, tend to occur most often because my arms are realistically proportioned.

4 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

The good news is that newer animations from Vista, Tuty's, Daiz Papp and a few others are now taking these into account: properly proportioned arms and legs and some AO kits are available in standard and "curvy" (a.k.a: overweight) shaped versions.

That is good news.

I'm using a reasonably up-to-date Vista AO, and I have to say that, for the most part, it works pretty well with my avatar, despite the fact that my proportions are different from most SL avatars.

[kiramanell]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

You're using the instance, however, of what are really two animations not working properly in sync. What I find more annoying, personally (in part because I am hardly ever on couples poses) are instances where a hand disappears inside the body or head, or two hands clip, or a leg doesn't sit properly, because the avatar's proportions are non-standard.

I get that this would be a remarkably difficult or possibly impossible problem to fix dynamically, with scripts or whatever. But it should be possible to produce variant poses or animations for differently proportioned avatars, just as mesh clothing makers use "standard sizing" sometimes, or produce different models for different mesh bodies.

Which is not to say that they'd find it worthwhile doing it: more and more, I'm seeing standard sizing and different versions of clothing for different mesh bodies disappearing, as clearly a lot of merchants have decided that it's faster and easier to focus on the one, or two, or three most popular bodies.

 

Yeah. Hands clipping thru my body (or my clothes), I should really post about that in the 'pet peeves' thread. 😛

It seems, to date, a lot of merchants are adding a proportional shape, next to their regular one. That helps, I suppose. What we really need, though, is for LL to come up with some sort of avi-anim override, (on a system level) that will prevent an anim from having your avi clip thru stuff. I mean, when you walk into a prim/mesh wall, your avi is aware of its physics shape too, and doesn't clip thru it (actually it kinda does, but bounces back quickly). Like in that picture of me sitting on my bed with my knees pulled up. That took the usual AVSitter 'Adjust' thingy; but why?! I mean, why couldn't my avi simply adjust to the height of my sheets? Those sheets may have a bumpy surface, and not be perfect, but when measured, say, from the bottom outline of my, well, bottom, LOL, at least I wouldn't be sitting like 20cm 'below deck', so to speak.

Seems to me LL has given anims a bit too much control, really -- especially the ability to utterly ignore any physics shapes around them. The technique for an avi to be aware of its surrounding physics has already been there since day 1: just needs to be applied to anims too.  

[Nalates Urriah]

7 hours ago, kiramanell said:

All y'all were right: ca. 1.8m seems to be the sweet spot for many animations. Strange indeed anims can't be scaled, though. I get that they're mocapped and  everything, but they were already scaled down when ported from real life, right?! So, what prevents them from being scaled when inside an avi/piece of furniture/kitchen, etc? (Along with the object they're in)

No.... The average real life person is in the 1.8m height range. The avatar is 1.8m tall...

Animations, as others have sort of explained, don't scale. The reason is they are generally just a set of rotations. So, say the knee bends 45 degrees at some point in the step. How does one scale that? If the knee only bends 22 degrees the leg will be straighter not smaller.

It is possible to include joint position in the animations. It is how avatar-deformers are made. But, doing so overrides your shape.

Size and animation gets complicated.

[Qwestor Janus]

On 8/14/2019 at 11:37 PM, kiramanell said:

Yeah. Hands clipping thru my body (or my clothes), I should really post about that in the 'pet peeves' thread. 😛

It seems, to date, a lot of merchants are adding a proportional shape, next to their regular one. That helps, I suppose. What we really need, though, is for LL to come up with some sort of avi-anim override, (on a system level) that will prevent an anim from having your avi clip thru stuff. I mean, when you walk into a prim/mesh wall, your avi is aware of its physics shape too, and doesn't clip thru it (actually it kinda does, but bounces back quickly). Like in that picture of me sitting on my bed with my knees pulled up. That took the usual AVSitter 'Adjust' thingy; but why?! I mean, why couldn't my avi simply adjust to the height of my sheets? Those sheets may have a bumpy surface, and not be perfect, but when measured, say, from the bottom outline of my, well, bottom, LOL, at least I wouldn't be sitting like 20cm 'below deck', so to speak.

Seems to me LL has given anims a bit too much control, really -- especially the ability to utterly ignore any physics shapes around them. The technique for an avi to be aware of its surrounding physics has already been there since day 1: just needs to be applied to anims too.  

Unfortunately, calculation of a large number of collisions for 'realistic' physics would cause a large load on both the LL server and your Internet connection.
 I'll tell you how it works approximately. Firstly, all attachments to an avatar are 'phantom'. You can make a huge sixty-four meter 'physical' cube, but when you put it on yourself, it will cease to collide with the environment. Therefore, for example, your mesh body will stick out through clothes not made for it. Or conversely, someone's genitals can penetrate into it (I'm sorry for this a naturalistic detail ) Second, SL physics doesn't consider an avatar as a complex structure, but as a some simple cube. You can see this if you make maximum shape size and put on some kind of avatar that deforms your skeleton. After, try to walk under a low placed object. You will see that SL 'thinks' you are much larger than you see it. Thirdly, all animations it's don't animations your avatar itself, but it's animation for a some point, originally located in the center of your avatar. It moves along the path given by animation and the 'phantom' of your avatar move with it. You can make an animation during which your avatar will “walk” all 255 meters of the sim, but at the same time it will remain in place. If your avatar will be on a sky platform, you will see that it is 'walking through the air'. But if you really move the avatar beyond the platform, then the collision 'fall' will work and you will fall. Exactly this position of this 'point' that writen in the script that affects whether you fall through the chair or conversely you will 'levitate' over it. And that’s exactly what allows you to quickly change the altitude over (or under) ground of your avatar without changing your shape. I think that creators can write a script that will calculate size of your avatar, but only size of your 'default' avatar without attachments will be taken into account and if you will want to dance on the bar counter, then your shoes all the same fall through it

[Jim Crisp]

17 hours ago, Qwestor Janus said:

Unfortunately, calculation of a large number of collisions for 'realistic' physics would cause a large load on both the LL server and your Internet connection. I would also

I would eagerly get a faster connection if it allow me to have better SL performance. Next week, I'm scheduled to get an upgrade from 80 mbps to 300 mbps; I could have gotten 1,000 mbps, but i couldn't see a reason to have that much bandwidth. I would also happily upgrade my computer and gladly pay more for more server power, if it would improve my SL experience.

Would it be feasible for LL to offer a premium account that included better server performance? If they could, those who wanted it and were willing to pay for it could have it, and others wouldn't have to pay for it. I've wondered for years why SL didn't have better collision detection, considering how much better our experience could be if it did. If the only reason is that it would take more server power and bandwidth, then we should have the option of having it.

[FairreLilette]

On 8/8/2019 at 3:37 PM, Rhonda Huntress said:

It would be nice if objects were created to a realistic scale to start with.

What is a realistic scale in Second Life?

On 8/8/2019 at 3:52 PM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I've sometimes wondered why those producing animations and poses don't make variant versions for different sizes. Clothing makers do this, after all.

That might be impossible since different neck, torso, arm length for example can vary so much in SL, not to even mention flat, mid and high feet.

For couples, it's best to try to "fit" your avatars, adjust them, and compromise a bit.  

It is not difficult to move or rotate cups or objects.  

Move the object while your avatar is wearing it.  

I made my chairs so they scale down to child size since all my chairs have tea drinking animations in them, they can be used for kid's tea parties for example.  

To the OP, it takes practice learning to move, rotate, stretch objects to fit into your hand, but it can be done, as well as finding objects best for you.

And, if a bunch of objects are meshed together with shadows...it sounds more difficult to shrink down.  Maybe consider separates as an alternative to look into for a kitchen.  

Edit In:  Also, if you are "floating" what you need to do is adjust your HOVER HEIGHT.  Right click on your avatar and choose APPEARANCE and then HOVER HEIGHT and moving the hover height slider to the right or left will adjust your avatar into the proper height for standing/sitting/etc.  Is this what you are talking about by floating?  

 

Edited August 17, 2019 by FairreLilette