Advice about Shapes

[AmberRose Mint]

Hi :) Now this may seem a strange ask but i am trying to either change my shape by modifying it or finding a new one. Whatever i seem to do (shorten legs, shorten height etc) it looks like my bum cheeks have been split in 2 and what i really want is a nice rounded womanly bum and soft thighs...Does anyone know any good shape creators that i can check out or advise how i can overcome the split in my arse look!? Thank you :)   

[Clarissa Lowell]

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AmberRose Mint wrote:

Does anyone know any good shape creators that i can check out or advise how i can overcome the split in my arse look!? Thank you

  

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Decrease muscle tone, increase fat. There are some sliders that are not named pretty names, but which make a pretty effect in the final result. Fat is one of them. Saddlebags is another.

Also, you might try increasing the hip length a bit.

The mesh has built in limitations, but those might help alleviate the extreme side of it.

[AmberRose Mint]

Thank you Will give it a go!

[Pussycat Catnap]

Read my guide about proportions (see my sig).

It will help you look right regarding that issue.

Follow it up with a good AO too - a bad AO can still split your avatar apart no matter what your shape.

 

 

[AmberRose Mint]

Many thanks for your help and i will certainly look at your guide

[Pussycat Catnap]

When it does finally come to the AO part, I'm partial to 'Random Kitten'.

-  But budget about 500L, and make sure to buy inworld by sampling -EVERY- animation in the AO. Some AOs will comes with a couple versions of the AO for different heights - if they do, make sure to find their instructions that help determine which one is for your height, and test it.

That said, once I have a base AO, I start removing some animations and replacing them with others to get 'my style' going.

- and my style is particular enough that I've walked up to friends on a 'secret alt' for the first time, in land not theirs, and had them say 'Hi cat'...

 

Refining your shape, fashion sense, and AO in SL can be a -LOT- of fun.

 

[Clarissa Lowell]

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AmberRose Mint wrote:

Thank you

Will give it a go!

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You are very welcome.

Have fun with it.

My av has some curves too. It is very possible.

Perhaps also try "love handles" if you want a thicker avatar.

[Bristle Chesnokov]

i found you sig very good. in zbrush they recommend 8 head tall. some other books recommend 7.5. so it was interesting to see what the proportions is since many designers dont know.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Its all about various artistic concepts versus realism concepts.

American comic books can sometimes go to 9 heads - but this tends to look distorted. By contrast anime can get down to 4 or 5, or for 'SD' mode, 2.

Its not uncommon in Sl to see people at 10 or 11 heads tall, and a very incorrect ration between torso and legs and body-width. Not to mention arms. Due to an error in the design of the female mesh, you nearly always need an arm setting of 90-100 to be humanly -possible-, and this still fails if you go more than a few inches above 6'...

Males with short arms by contrast are just fools. The male mesh lacks this error, or so I have been told.

 

[Lachlan Galaxy]

I have to say when I read Clarrisa's reply and saw Saddlebags. It made me laugh so hard. Why would any woman want saddlebags?

 

LOL

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Lachlan Galaxy wrote:

I have to say when I read Clarrisa's reply and saw Saddlebags. It made me laugh so hard. Why would any woman want saddlebags?

 

LOL

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Poorly named dial. While correct in what it adjusts, it uses a trigger word. But setting it to 0 distorts your avatar. Most of what gives women a body shape different from men is in fact fat - its just a question of how much and in where.

You'll find that tweaking all the dials always works better than tweaking one, and a setting of 0 is usually a distortion. Likewise a setting of 100, with the sole exception of 'arm length' due to a "bug" in the way the avatar-mesh was built.

A little bit of 'saddle bags' will give you a very important dose of feminine curve. A little too much, and we have Martin Lawrence playing you in his next movie...

 

 

 

[Penny Patton]

I've written a couple lengthy articles about creating shapes in SL if you're interested and willing to do some reading.

In "A Matter of Proportion" I give a general explanation of human body proportion and why it's important to know about it due to SL's lack of guides and unintuitive appearance editor. I then go on to explain some of the bugs and quirks in the appearance editor, such as the "short arms for women" bug that was mentioned (Not so much a bug, really, as bad design on the part of the Lindens.) and why simply reducing the "Height" slider results in a stumpy, hobbit like appearance.

Later, I wrote a brief follow-up trying to explain how "good proportions" does not mean the same thing as "everyone should look like their real world self", showing how even pin-up and comic book women adhere to tried and true rules of proportion. This more a rebuttal to people who confuse good proportions with some strict code where all avatars would look identical, or prevent people from creating attractive shapes, when to the contrary these concepts of proportion are what help artists render attractive human shapes.

  I hope those help!