How to handle extreme size differences when it comes to poses/furniture? Anyone else struggle with mismatched avatar size?

[LilithServil]

I'll preface this by saying I hope I'm in the right section! This is equally about furniture and animations as it is about avatar size differences so I wasn't entirely sure where to put it. ^^;

Even before having a more drastic difference in avatar scale I noticed furniture anims involving more than a single person was, more often than not, meant for "same size" individuals but was more or less able to adjust things to somewhat work... But how does one navigate a multiple ft height difference where more often than not, arms will be floating well away from the other person's body, hands will be nowhere near meeting, etc? Anyone else suffering a similar issue? Are there any animators who cater to more "specialty" size scales or is that a fool's errand?

For those curious, my partner has his avatar scaled to more or less his normal height, around 5'6. My avatar, however, is based on a character that's closer to 8ft and so far it's been almost impossible to use any of our existing furniture with one another-- and that's with me taking the "masc" poses and him ending up on the "fem" poses for a vague attempt to height match LMAO.

[Lucia Nightfire]

You don't navigate it. You deal with it.

This has been a problem with couples animations since SL's inception.

SL does not have IK support, only hardcoded animations.

And by this, I mean the ability to insert/piggyback an IK track into an existing animation that can make one user's hand(s) or other limbs follow another user's body part(s), their own body part(s) or the environment (prim/mesh/ground physics shape).

The only thing we have is an uncontrollable generic system IK that turns your head toward a chatter, turns your head or eyes toward what is alt-cammed, points your head, hand and arm towards a selection or make your system feet align to SL terrain slope.

And unless LL's Puppetry project solves this IK problem, I feel it will be yet another half-implemented feature that doesn't get much use.

[Bree Giffen]

You can try to look for furniture that has animation for multiple sizes available. IK (inverse kinematics) would help if it allowed people to adjust and save animations. The few times I've encountered size differences usually ended up in one person resizing their avatar for the moment. If everyone were the same size, all animations could be totally set up perfectly by animators. 

[LilithServil]

6 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

You don't navigate it. You deal with it.

This has been a problem with couples animations since SL's inception.

SL does not have IK support, only hardcoded animations.

And by this, I mean the ability to insert/piggyback an IK track into an existing animation that can make one user's hand(s) or other limbs follow another user's body part(s), their own body part(s) or the environment (prim/mesh/ground physics shape).

The only thing we have is an uncontrollable generic system IK that turns your head toward a chatter, turns your head or eyes toward what is alt-cammed, points your head, hand and arm towards a selection or make your system feet align to SL terrain slope.

And unless LL's Puppetry project solves this IK problem, I feel it will be yet another half-implemented feature that doesn't get much use.

I 100% know SL doesn't have IK support and animations have been made, more or less, to fit the most typical or generic shapes either by hand or via mocap. Mostly I was curious if there are in fact any somewhat known animators/designers that have taken mismatched sizes into consideration or not.

I've definitely seen plenty of people several heads shorter than the other individual posed/animated together before with minimal clipping or floating going on (obviously there's *some* as that's just the nature of SL, but not floating to the degree where you could fit an entire other person between them) so I wasn't sure if all of the poses/furniture I have is just sub optimal-- it's a couple years old as I've been more or less on hiatus due to burnout.

[Stephanie Misfit]

7 minutes ago, LilithServil said:

I 100% know SL doesn't have IK support and animations have been made, more or less, to fit the most typical or generic shapes either by hand or via mocap. Mostly I was curious if there are in fact any somewhat known animators/designers that have taken mismatched sizes into consideration or not.

I've definitely seen plenty of people several heads shorter than the other individual posed/animated together before with minimal clipping or floating going on (obviously there's *some* as that's just the nature of SL, but not floating to the degree where you could fit an entire other person between them) so I wasn't sure if all of the poses/furniture I have is just sub optimal-- it's a couple years old as I've been more or less on hiatus due to burnout.

None of the big animators selling to furniture makers have taken mismatched sizes into account. You will need to use the furniture pose adjust menu to compensate for any differences.

[Nalates Urriah]

57 minutes ago, LilithServil said:

I 100% know SL doesn't have IK support and animations have been made, more or less, to fit the most typical or generic shapes either by hand or via mocap. Mostly I was curious if there are in fact any somewhat known animators/designers that have taken mismatched sizes into consideration or not.

I've definitely seen plenty of people several heads shorter than the other individual posed/animated together before with minimal clipping or floating going on (obviously there's *some* as that's just the nature of SL, but not floating to the degree where you could fit an entire other person between them) so I wasn't sure if all of the poses/furniture I have is just sub optimal-- it's a couple years old as I've been more or less on hiatus due to burnout.

Some animators provide their animations in 3 sizes; small, medium, and large.

I have not seen any furniture makers that use "sizes" of animations. Certainly, none allow selecting of size per sitter.

There are some HUDs and furniture that make an adjustment for avatar height. They essentially either try to calculate where each avatar's pelvis is and adjust heights to get a match or calculate pelvis-to-eye distance and try to match eye-to-eye height.

Many of the perfectly matched-up avatars in pictures are posed using one of the posing tools like Black Dragon's POSER. Or they are posed in a render other than the SL Viewer. Some of us tweak camera angles to make the illusion that things fit and touch correctly. But my avatar cannot scratch her nose unless I make her a custom animation.

[Maitimo]

On 6/13/2023 at 12:50 PM, LilithServil said:

I'll preface this by saying I hope I'm in the right section! This is equally about furniture and animations as it is about avatar size differences so I wasn't entirely sure where to put it. ^^;

Even before having a more drastic difference in avatar scale I noticed furniture anims involving more than a single person was, more often than not, meant for "same size" individuals but was more or less able to adjust things to somewhat work... But how does one navigate a multiple ft height difference where more often than not, arms will be floating well away from the other person's body, hands will be nowhere near meeting, etc? Anyone else suffering a similar issue? Are there any animators who cater to more "specialty" size scales or is that a fool's errand?

For those curious, my partner has his avatar scaled to more or less his normal height, around 5'6. My avatar, however, is based on a character that's closer to 8ft and so far it's been almost impossible to use any of our existing furniture with one another-- and that's with me taking the "masc" poses and him ending up on the "fem" poses for a vague attempt to height match LMAO.

The only real solution is for one or both people to adjust the size of their avatars until the animations match satisfactorially. 

If you are wanting to take snapshots, then you can also purchase this - https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Animare-Plus-Pose-Animation-System-Boxed/15439427 - you'll need the Plus one because this enables the user to manipulate the pose of another avatar as well as themselves. This will help with things like out-of-place arms that are not affected by the furniture pose adjust. Black Dragon's built in poser is a free alternative but with BD you can't re-position another avatar and the other avatar can't see your adjustments.

[LilithServil]

11 hours ago, Maitimo said:

The only real solution is for one or both people to adjust the size of their avatars until the animations match satisfactorially. 

If you are wanting to take snapshots, then you can also purchase this - https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Animare-Plus-Pose-Animation-System-Boxed/15439427 - you'll need the Plus one because this enables the user to manipulate the pose of another avatar as well as themselves. This will help with things like out-of-place arms that are not affected by the furniture pose adjust. Black Dragon's built in poser is a free alternative but with BD you can't re-position another avatar and the other avatar can't see your adjustments.

I know about BD's poser (I've used it in the past for myself!) and I've been keeping a close eye on its improvements to its animator.

I'm DEFINITELY interested in that system, I think that's more along the lines of what I'm looking for. I'll check it out, thanks!

[Missy Starchild]

As a person who runs with a very short avatar (by SL standards), you learn to live with it and you learn to love it.