A Matter of Scale - How scale affects content creation and land ownership in Second Life.

[Jo Yardley]

It has at least been going on since I joined SL about 2 or so years ago but it has been getting stronger and stronger.

I also think that if realism comes to SL a bit more it will make fantasy sims and avatars even more exciting.

[Void Singer]

much longer.... similar (although less well formed) discussions could be had all the way back to 2005 that I can remember

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

1) They can fix the camera placement.

 All it takes to vastly improve the SL camera placement is changing a few numbers in the debug menu. Anyone can do this easily, but only a very small minority tend to change defaults so it would be ideal if LL changed the defaults themselves. 

Instructions on how to do so are here. 



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PS: Those instructions suggest setting one of the values to -7000. I suspect this is a typo and -0.700 was meant instead, since -0.700 gives a result that resembles Penny's screenshots.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

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As far as male avatars are concerned, I haven't noticed the same shift. Males seem to be as tall (and wide, with even smaller heads

) as they were when I joined SL. I'm wondering if others see the same thing, or if the scale is really changing for both genders?

- Luc -

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A lot of men seem to want to make their heads smaller and smaller and smaller - and their arms shorter and shorter and shorter, and their hands tinier and tinier and tinier. But the shoulders wider and wider...

You've got to wonder where they're trying to go with this.

 

[Jo Yardley]

Could you please check if I'm not drinking cola before posting such pictures?
You made me laugh so hadr cola came out of my nose and sprayed all over the room. :matte-motes-big-grin-evil:

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Melissa Yeuxdoux wrote:

Thanks for setting it all down in one place. I choose to be as tall (and leggy) as I can possibly be in SL--guess it comes from watching _Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman_ and seeing pictures of Anna Swan when I was little--but that's my choice, and having everything out of scale kills the effect, as you show.

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You'll improve that effect if you sit down and try to improve the proportions. There's nothing you can do for the arm slider, but you can get most of the rest of it to look proportional even at a tall height - and then used 'controlled' distortion for a specific intentional effect.

And you'll look better than all the tall people who are just that way from dialing up 'random sliders'.

I did that with my Na'vi when I first made her. I redid the shape I'd gotten with my Na'vi skin so that she had good proportions (minus arm slider), and then morphed off from that to as close of the movie's effect as I could do, without looking freakish (because unlike in the movie, I'd be wandering around a world not populated with other na'vi). And I was still somewhere between 7 to 8 feet tall.

 

[Penny Patton]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

PS: Those instructions suggest setting one of the values to -7000. I suspect this is a typo and -0.700 was meant instead, since -0.700 gives a result that resembles Penny's screenshots.

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Thanks for pointing that out, I've corrected the typo!

[Elsie Wonder]

The base female avatar is Ruth. Up until recently all skins and clothes were made from a template based on her mesh. 

All animations were based on her mesh too. The degree of joint movements, distance of hand and foot movement ,height for sitting, walking, etc. were all based on Ruth.

The further a female avatar deviates from Ruth, the worse her clothes will fit and the worse her skin will look. If the avatar is larger than Ruth then her animations can leave her floating and her feet sliding along the floor when walking.

[Luc Starsider]

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Jo Yardley wrote:

It has at least been going on since I joined SL about 2 or so years ago but it has been getting stronger and stronger.

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Then it might be safe to say it is not a shortlived fashion thing. That's encouraging.

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Jo Yardley wrote:

I also think that if realism comes to SL a bit more it will make fantasy sims and avatars even more exciting.

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Yes. I agree.

 

@Pussycat: LOL. You know what makes that picture even funnier? I saw a guy just like that ouside a store just a few minutes ago. :D:D

- Luc -

[Penny Patton]

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Elsie Wonder wrote:

The base female avatar is Ruth. Up until recently all skins and clothes were made from a template based on her mesh. 

All animations were based on her mesh too. The degree of joint movements, distance of hand and foot movement ,height for sitting, walking, etc. were all based on Ruth.

The further a female avatar deviates from Ruth, the worse her clothes will fit and the worse her skin will look. If the avatar is larger than Ruth then her animations can leave her floating and her feet sliding along the floor when walking.

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For anyone curious, "Ruth" is 6'4" tall, shorter than the 6'8" female starter avatars but taller than the 5'5" average of North American women.

As illustrated in the example avatars provided in the article, it's not difficult to create a scale sized shape where textures are not distorted.

Regarding movement, onbly the base system animations would be based on Ruth's shape, and even then I'm not certain that's the case. Much of SL's visual design aspects seem to be implemented without that kind of planning.

I can say, however, that animations imported into SL are more affected by deviations from the models used to create those animations. If an animator's model is 5'4" with correctly proportioned arms and legs, then a 7' tall avatar with legs that are too long and arms that are too short will run into problems.

 When I decided to revamp my avatar with careful, thorough attention to proportion, I found the majority of animations actually began to work much, much better with my shape."hands on hips" poses would actually place myu hands on my hips rather thanb my abdomen. Fingers would actually brush through my hair rather than my face, etcetera.

 You can see the affect on standing poses as well. Even at 5'7" I've animations that sink my feet into the ground, and others that leave me floating above it. Animators need to pay attention to these settings, and some do mark animations as appropriate for specific heights (although these notifications are often misleading, due to the AgentHeight bug misreporting height)

 

I should try to avoid overstating the effeft on standing poses, however. Only the most observant will notice anything at all as it's usually not a severe offset.

Couples poses and ground sits are the animations most affected.

[Intus Infinity]

Very well written and informative! I fully agree with everything Penny has addressed.

[AlexanderThe Benelli]

Awesome post!

Most of the trends in SL are based solely on peer pressure. If Roleplay sims start encouraging realistic Avatar sizes, that trend will carry over to other areas. If popular brands scale down their mainstores and attachments, that will influence every single of their customers in some way. Yes, there will always be those that need to overcompensate for something by walking around SL as a 2.69m tall, perfectly muscular, tanned bodybuilder that drives cheesy, badly sculpted, sports cars. This shouldn't be about changing those people (same applies for physics-defiying barbie girls), it should be about making those people the unusual,the oversized, the non-normals.

Create more realistically sized builds in Second Life! Once people find that they look out of place, they'll start changing their shapes

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

> When I decided to revamp my avatar with careful, thorough attention to proportion, I found the majority of animations actually began to work much, much better with my shape."hands on hips" poses would actually place myu hands on my hips rather thanb my abdomen. Fingers would actually brush through my hair rather than my face, etcetera.

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I've long been a fan of motion capture dance animations. They pretty much -ONLY- work well on a properly proportioned avatar. But so many people buying them have distorted avatars that people have gotten used to seeing themselves and others animate strangely.

 When I watch my avatar dance in animation, I might as well be watching a real person. Its just that smooth (lag allowing).

The difference is most striking visiting a store like henmations (just left there a few mins ago on my human alt) - get on a dance pose just used by a 'stretched out' avatar and compare how she was moving to yourself as a proportionate one.

 

[Maximillon Lefavre]

So I'm guessing you also want to see the majority of avatars be fat, overweight middle-aged old people or maybe just fat, ugly people. Seriously this is SL where the majority is so vain and old people create young av's, fat people create slim, trim, fit, muscular av's, ugly people create gorgeous, beautiful av's. I understand that SL should be somewhat of a reflection upon RL however that should be more about how we show our personalities rather then what size avatar we have.

[Luc Starsider]

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Maximillon Lefavre wrote:

So I'm guessing you also want to see the majority of avatars be fat, overweight middle-aged old people or maybe just fat, ugly people. Seriously this is SL where the majority is so vain and old people create young av's, fat people create slim, trim, fit, muscular av's, ugly people create gorgeous, beautiful av's. I understand that SL should be somewhat of a reflection upon RL however that should be more about how we show our personalities rather then what size avatar we have.

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That's not quite what this is about. Using a scale closer to RL will actually increase the potential for individualization for your avatar. It give you more room to vary the size compared to others around you. Thus making it possible to show your personality using scale as well as other things to a higher degree than now. Whether you want to use that flexibility to create a fat, overweight, middle-aged old avatar is up to you.

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

I would... that way I'd be the prettiest... lol.

Seriously, it's not about making SL more realistic. It's about using correct scale which would, in fact, make it possible for avatars to seem even more unrealistic if they wanted to be a huge demon beast or a big dragon av for example. As it is now, with scale maxed out, the creatures that are supposed to be huge end up looking not much larger than a normal person... how convincing is that?

...Dres

Edited for spelling.

[Josh Susanto]

[Maximillon Lefavre wrote: So I'm guessing you also want to see the majority of avatars be fat, overweight middle-aged old people or maybe just fat, ugly people. ]

If it were left up to the self-appointed Size Police currently patrolling SL, that might be the next step. And I think it's imperative to get these people to STFU sooner rather than later. 

OTOH, Penny makes a very compelling argument for voluntary scale normalization, in and of itself, which has nothing to do with preventing users from "misrepresenting themselves" (which is what the Size Police really seem to be on about). 

Nonetheless, I consider that even completely voluntary scale normalization will tend to be mostly a waste of effort as long as LL neither sets a new standard reflecting prevailing current scale use or (better) simply makes all objects moddable for size.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Maximillon Lefavre wrote:

So I'm guessing you also want to see the majority of avatars be fat, overweight middle-aged old people or maybe just fat, ugly people. Seriously this is SL where the majority is so vain and old people create young av's, fat people create slim, trim, fit, muscular av's, ugly people create gorgeous, beautiful av's. I understand that SL should be somewhat of a reflection upon RL however that should be more about how we show our personalities rather then what size avatar we have.

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Complete 123% failure to grasp the concept here.

Getting good scale and proportion will actually improve the ability to make attractive avatars.

 

[Jo Yardley]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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Complete 123% failure to grasp the concept here.

Getting good scale and proportion will actually improve the ability to make attractive avatars.

 

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With all due respect, your math is wrong.

It should be 683%

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

 

If it were left up to the self-appointed Size Police currently patrolling SL, that might be the next step. And I think it's imperative to get these people to STFU sooner rather than later. 

nothing to do with preventing users from "misrepresenting themselves" (which is what the Size Police really seem to be on about). 

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Wow, what an incredibly inflamatory, self righteous, and foolish thing to say; along with completey wrong on what is going on here. That kind of attitude belongs on some third party board, not here.

 

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

Did you read everything he wrote? I think it's clear he does understand what is going on. I basically said the same thing in less inflammatory words... oh wait, that might have been that other thread.

It was: "I fully support people advocating for change, as long as it's not done in an offensive, condescending way. Of course, people being people, some will be that way... especially the ones that have been ridiculed for being short in the past."

Education is the key, not going around badgering people about the size of their avatar. Tone as a lot to do with people's acceptance of the other side of an argument. If you come off sounding accusatory and belittling you're shutting down the line of communication from the start. A perfect example of which is Josh's tone in the post to which you replied.

...Dres

[Luc Starsider]

YOU are the one who is politicizing this. Nobody else.

YOU are also the one making this into a conspiracy between LL and landowners. Nobody else.

As far as I've seen, you do that to most issues. Why is that?

And you are missing the point - which was said before - if everybody's tall then nobody's tall. Correct scale give those who want to be tall the chance to actually stand out and BE tall.

- Luc -

[Solar Legion]

(This response meant for a poster whose responses in this thread have since been removed. Leaving it up simply for the sake of the record.)

Thanks for the laugh - no, seriously.

You could not have managed to utterly miss the point of and utterly twist the meaning of the OP and further than you already have.

The only person who honestly believes a single word you've written in response ... is you.

You have so utterly lost touch with reality that it ceases to be amusing after a very short time.

There is an issue in Second Life concerning the scale of avatars and quite frankly the fact that you seem to believe otherwise is rather telling. If you bothered to actually read the OP and look carefully at some of the images .... You'd know just how utterly wrong your response truly is. 

[Josh Susanto]

Disparagaing Penny's assumed perverse motives seems to be a lot easier than arguing against the basic points she makes about there being a scale problem (which I ask you to do next time if you can... please?).

The suggestion that only virtual pedophiles want anything done about scale is abolutely incorrect, and the rest of the discourse seems to boil down to the idea that we need to continue to ignore scale problems simply because that's just the first step toward actually doing something about scale problems, which, if we do it, means that the global conspiracy of virtual pedophiles has already won.

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

Never have I seen such an intense grasping at straws..  Not only do you refer to adults you don't like as children.   You're calling a cow a robot.  Your desire simply put up a fight has truly blurred your vision. ()

Sure, fine, be tall... That's cool.  Simply admit you're something like 6'10" or whatever.  That's all.  That's not "Adult".  That's "Giant".  If you like that, fine, more power to you. ()

But, let the to-scale adults be to-scale adults as well.  If you can truly say that a busty 5'5" or whatever bipedal cow is a "child"... Well... Cuckoo is an understatement. (=_=)

Really, get over yourself.  There are people who believe 1-meter is 1-meter and suggest people follow that as a guideline to allow for more consistency and diversity in a virtual world where everything ~should~ be possible... Including monster avatars which tower over humans. (>_<)

To quote my estate covenant:

This sim is to be constructed to-scale.  Meaning the meter will be honored as-is and "short" avatars will be considered proper adult height.  Avatars taller than 1.8 meters in real prim height will be considered creatures of fantasy and lore and will NOT be used as reference in order to falsely accuse properly scaled avatars of being depictions of children.

()y