Two newbie questions ... furniture scale, grass

[Ginger Blackwood]

Hi ... first question ...

I have a lovely little InVerse home that I adore ... modern, fits on my canal-side lot, looks amazing. However, my avi is set to be about 5'8" and the steps leading up to the house and inside are basically at knee level. I could fit four of me into the bathtub, the sofa and bed and furniture are maybe 50% too large scale-wise, etc. I guess I want to know can i scale the whole structure down when rezzing, or do i have to individual scale everything down to properly fit me ... each individual item of furniture, every wall, etc.

Second, this canal-side lot is simply sand texture and I want to add a grass texture to the land but it seem like it won't allow me to change the base land to close to the water's edge to grass. So is the best thing to add a thin plane of grass texture to the areas I want to be green?

Thanks for indulging this newbie. !!!

[Rolig Loon]

The answer to your first questions is "It depends, but probably not."  First of all, you didn't mention whether you have permission to modify the house.  I suspect that you do, but if not all bets are off.  Then, assuming that you have permission to modify it, I doubt that all of your furniture is linked to the house.  That would be highly unusual.  If it is, then you might be able to resize everything at least a bit.  Otherwise -- the normal case -- you have to resize everything individually.  If you have permission.

The answer to your second question is that you cannot change ground texture at the parcel level.  Only the landowner of the region can do it, and then only on a region-wide basis.  If you want to affect the ground texture in your own parcel (and it the region owner allows it) you will have to add a tastefully-textured prim or mesh surface, as you are suggesting.  Be very cautious, though.  There is a fine line between "effective" and "ghastly".  Your neighbors may tell you when you have crossed it.

[Fauve Aeon]

I ‘live’ in a couple of different communities and one also has this kind of scale issue. I made a larger avatar shape that fits correctly there and I just pop it on for that place, it was a better solution for me than trying to size all the things down when the community at large (pun intended) was just set to a bigger scale. If the home is the correct scale, won’t scaling down the things in it seem a bit odd? 

[Ginger Blackwood]

Thanks so much, Rolig! I guess I could make a bigger version of me for the house, Fauve, thanks!

Edited January 11, 2020 by JuliaAemilius

[animats]

Early SL avatars tended to be way oversized. Today, there's a tendency to go for real dimensions. InVerse has been around for a while and some of their buildings date from the oversized era.

Rooms in SL tend to have extra height to accomodate the normal camera position - above and behind the avatar.  If you have a lower ceiling, and it has a proper physical model, your camera will be pushed down below the ceiling. Usually. Realistic ceiling heights in SL feel cramped.

Even the new Belli houses have huge ceiling heights. At the last SL birthday fair, there was a 1950s house, built to accurate dimensions, and it felt very cramped. Some regions, notably New Babbage, require buildings to have real world dimensions so that the builds match.

Furniture dimensions, though, should not be much larger than RL sizes. Don't worry too much about accommodating giant avatars. Worry more about realistically sized ones.

Here are some useful standard dimensions used in real life, modern US version:

Typical real-world size information for objects in Second Life

All dimensions in meters. Data from various architectural sources. Rounded off to 0.005m.

Furniture

   Dining table height     0.750
   Chair seat height            0.460
   Kitchen counter height  0.915
   Bar height              1.010
    
Buildings
 
    Door height             2.135 (Real world. SL tends to run bigger due to oversize avatars)
    Door width              0.920 (ADA compatible)
    
    Brick dimensions        0.100 × 0.070 × 0.200
    Cinderblock dimensions  0.410 × 0.200 × 0.200
    Stair tread height      0.180
    Stair tread spacing     0.280

Brick and cinderblock dimensions include mortar, so these values are suitable for repeating textures.
Stair tread spacing is a minimum.

Edited January 12, 2020 by animats
Fix typo

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, animats said:

Furniture dimensions, though, should not be much larger than RL sizes.

Left: typical old style SL coffee table. Right: An exact copy of my mother's RL coffee table: