jamesether Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 HelloI’m going to start working on my avatar proportions, and I was wondering what the average height here is. As I understand, the SL Viewer 2 under-reports your height by about six inches / 15 centimeters, so if your appearance editor tells you that you’re 6’6” / 1.98 meters, you are actually about 7 feet / 2.13 meters. (Is this also true of SL Viewer 3?).Apparently, Phoenix / Firestorm are more accurate, but the only truly accurate measurement is prim height.Soooo… for those inclined to answer:How tall are you?Where did you get that measurement from? (Viewer 2, Phoenix / Firestorm, prim height, etc)Are you male or female?If you have a sense of what the average height is for most people, please indicate if that is prim height.It would seem more likely to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing proportion if the height slider wasn’t already pushing the maximum, and thus distorting the avatar from the get go. However, I don’t want to be a cute little guy in a world of giants. I’ve also read that it’s more difficult to shop for clothes if you’re at a realistic height, since the designers (naturally) style around average SL height.So I’m thinking that the only way to reconcile between SL average and RL normal might be to create two versions of my avatar… One for mingling and walking around in Giant Land (so as not to be a total shrimp / confused with a child), and one for sims or poseballs with other RL sized people. The height difference between RL and SL seems to be too great to find a “happy medium”.If anyone has any suggestions / workarounds, I’d appreciate your insight.Thanks.BTW, is it possible to create a shape from scratch? Or are they all based on pre-existing shapes? Are all shapes basically the same, with the only difference being the slider positions? Or do designers generally start from a base design model and set their own range of what a particular slider can do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Over the years SL avatars have gotten a lot taller. I am an artist in RL and had a lot of formal training in body proportions in art school as well as a lot of practice in drawing and sculpting bodies. When I first came to SL in 2006 I spent a lot of time and effort making my own shape based on my RL body and height and was on the 'tall' side for a woman because I am taller than average in RL. I've always been satisfied with my avi and have never changed its shape. Now I'm a shrimp compared to most women, LOL. I think you should go with what you are most comfortable with. Your idea of having two shapes may be a good one, but there aren't many places in SL where people are normal RL heights. Most all furniture is proportioned to the larger than life avatars most SL people have or geared to specific populations such as tinies or micros. To me the most important thing is to get the body proportions right for the height you are. I know a couple of men in SL that have very tall avatars only because in RL they are extremely tall too. Yet with some work, they have been able to get their body proportions right and look good , probably because all they had to do was look in a mirror to get the proportions right. You always have to start with a shape of some sort when you create a new shape. However you can start by using any of the full perm shapes in your library and save as a new shape by renaming it.. As far as clothes, this is an issue for me too since I am now a shrimp compared to a lot of women. However, if you learn how to mod your prim clothing using the edit tools and only buy modifiable clothing it isn't that big of a problem, especially for a man since you don't have breast and hip size to worry about. You can learn the use of the basic building tools then practicemodifying clothes by making copies of them and modifying the copies. If you mess up, just delete it and start over. Just be sure to get mod/copy clothing. Avoid clothing that is not modifiable and only have resize scripts as they only make the clothes larger or smaller over all and you can't mod them in only one direction. Even when I was more 'normal' in size compared to other SSL women, I still had to do a lot of modifying because I'm very picky about how my clothes fit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 I've no idea how tall my av is but, for SL, avs have to be significantly taller that RL people. It's because of the camera that's behind the av. A typical RL room (in the UK) is, say, 12' x 12'. That's approximately 4m x 4m - slightly smaller actually. Take a 4sqm piece of land and put a wall round it with a door and window in the walls, and try to move around, or even see anything, inside it. In RL it's easy, of course, but in SL, with the cam behind, it's impossible. So everything in SL has to be bigger than RL. It's why rooms and furniture are bigger. And if you make your av the same height as your RL self, you'll feel really tiny in any typical SL home. If a sofa is made to typical RL sizes, it would look so tiny in a room as to be ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coby Foden Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 I'm female, my height reported by different measurements is: 1.803 meters (5.915 feet) <-- measured with prim 1.820 meters (5.971 feet) <-- Phoenix/Firestorm 1.620 meters (5.315 feet) <-- Linden Lab viewer This 1.803 meters prim height works pretty well for me in all surroundings. Among the giant avatars and also in surroundings designed close to real world measurements. I can say that for me this height is a "happy medium". I have no difficulties in finding well fitting clothes. Often only very slight adjustment of the prim clothes would be needed. It seems to me that it's the giants (very tall ones with huge hips, bums and breasts) are the ones who will find it more difficult to find fitting clothes. I have also still shorter shape about 1.65 meters prim height (5.413 feet). This looks like an adult woman too, but among the giant avatars it looks very small. So as a compromise most often I use the 1.803 meters tall shape. All shapes are based on the same pre-existing default shape. You will get the default shape when in the viewer you do "New Body Parts, New Shape". The differences come only from how the appearance sliders have been adjusted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coby Foden Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Phil Deakins wrote: So everything in SL has to be bigger than RL. It's why rooms and furniture are bigger. And if you make your av the same height as your RL self, you'll feel really tiny in any typical SL home. If a sofa is made to typical RL sizes, it would look so tiny in a room as to be ridiculous. Everything does not need to be bigger in SL than in RL. There are many many examples in SL which show that RL scale works perfectly well in SL and looks great. The default camera location can be adjusted to a better position, it's not locked. It's strange idea that everything should be made bigger because of the default camera location. Gigantissimus feeds gigantissimus. PS Phil, I checked your inworld shop. You have nice furniture there, but unfortunately all of them suffer from the "gigantissimus" infection. Everything was too big for me. Anyway, the positive side was that I saw that they are modifiable, so one can adjust their size to suit one's avatar and house. :smileyhappy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 i'm 5'7" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoveAngeL Lyre Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Hello jamesether and welcome to SL Forums. I am female: With Viewer 3 my height is 1,92m (6'4'') with shoes / 1,81m (5'11'') without shoes With Phoenix my height is 2,12m (6'11'') with shoes / 1,98m (6'6'') without shoes The height measuring with the official viewer is no accurate. That's why many avatars look like giants and 8'' tall. Long time ago Peewee Musytari sent me in world an accurate height detector and i use only that to measure my height. I can send you it if you wish. Just im me in world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Coby Foden wrote: Everything does not need to be bigger in SL than in RL. There are many many examples in SL which show that RL scale works perfectly well in SL and looks great. The default camera location can be adjusted to a better position, it's not locked. It's strange idea that everything should be made bigger because of the default camera location. Gigantissimus feeds gigantissimus. PS Phil, I checked your inworld shop. You have nice furniture there, but unfortunately all of them suffer from the "gigantissimus" infection. Everything was too big for me. Anyway, the positive side was that I saw that they are modifiable, so one can adjust their size to suit one's avatar and house. :smileyhappy: Alright, maybe some things can be more realistically sized. Trees, for instance. But buildings and furniture do need to be larger than life because of the default camera position. The default position is what matters. The ability to change is doesn't come into it because people mostly use the default. Also, getting it closer isn't as good for walking around in SL. It's helpful to see the body when moving in a virtual world or game. You are right about my furniture. It's made for defaults, as is usual. Some of it is smaller though, but all of it is unrealistically big for RL sized avatars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceera Murakami Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Female, 5'7" tall, as measued against a prim. In the 1930 Berlin sim you can get a fantastic, free avatar proportion kit that included an accurate avatar height measuring device, and good examples of a normally proportioned human male and female body. It's in the teleport plaza, right by the train station entrance. If you try for a realistic, accurate height, a lot of furniture and vehicles and buildings will seem too large for you. To design such things for the average, overly tall avatars in SL, designers tend to scale things at about 125% of the correct size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ry0ta Exonar Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 The shape I'm usually wearing is 2.21m prim height but even that looks short inworld. I have also a shape of 1.85m, rarely use it though. I'm selling shapes with different heights and more than half of the customers buy the tallest ones (over 2.40m), so I would assume the average height of muscular male avis should be pretty tall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelli May Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 According to the Firestorm appearence editor, I am 1.78m, or a little over 5'10" tall. Measuring by prim, I make it 1.76m in a straight upright posture - so slightly under 5'10". All measurements excluding shoes and hair. In RL, that would make me taller than average, even among the tallest human ethnic groups. Even a man of this height would be around average height in most ethnicities. In SL, I see more adult female avs who are taller than me than are shorter, although I think the average is probably shorter than it used to be. Seeing a male adult av shorter than me is incredibly rare, and usually done for a specific effect (furry, fae, neko etc.). Many prim clothes I buy are both too large on the height axis and too small on the width, especially waist, bust and limb circumference. So by SL standards I'm not only short but also fat! Note that I don't have a huge bust, but having non-zero body-fat and width sliders makes me too big for many outfits. In RL terms, larger band size, smaller cup size. Clearly my avatar is some kind of distorted freak In fact, I consider my avatar to be realistically proportioned: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 I under-reports by the distance from your eyes to whatever is above them. If someone sees 6+ inches in their forhead... that's a different issue. If you want to get your proportions going right, read my blog article on the subject: Screenshots to take you through step by step figuring out proper proportion: http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/ - That will do you much more good that worrying about specific scale. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Phil Deakins wrote: I've no idea how tall my av is but, for SL, avs have to be significantly taller that RL people. It's because of the camera that's behind the av. This is not true. Room and other things are built bigger, but with 3D cameras and barbie doll houses, that actually works better when the doll placed inside is smaller. - You will notice this in dolls and in all other 3D apps as well. Wander through an MMO sometime. The walls need to be about 1.5 to 2x taller than they are in RL, in -comparrision- to the avatar. So if you make your avatar bigger, the walls just get even bigger. The default camera ONLY impacts walls and cielings. NOTHING else needs to scale up for it. Nonetheless, even this can be corrected for easily with these settings: CameraOffsetRearView X: -2.5 Y: -0.100 Z: -0.300 FocusOffsetRearView X: 0.4 Y: -0.100 Z: 0.100 Which I explain here: http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/getting-started-in-second-life/#Preferences Once you do that you only need walls slightly above scale for the avatar. Avatar itself does not matter for its specific scale - walls scale up depending on camera, but not avatar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theresa Tennyson Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 I"m roughly 5'-3" by Linden Labs' viewers which measure agent height or 5''9" measured by a prim. I wear a "teen girl" shape and it was about that height when I got it when I started. Most "teen girls" in SL are somewhere in that height range, especially the ones who are "eighteen." As far as men's shapes go, I find that most of them look ridiculous. Many, many men are about eight feet tall and for some reason set their head size so that it looks like a walnut in comparison to the rest of their bodies. When I slow dance with a lot of male avatars my feet will be several inches off the floor. All shapes are based on the default shapes and sliders except for the handful of mesh shapes available. When you buy a shape you're basically paying for the maker's labor and manipulation skills - "materials" are free and the same for everyone. I've been noticing that some newer manufacturers are coming out with furniture that's scaled smaller than older furniture - Fuzzy Bee, what's next and LISP come to mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knutz Scorpio Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 My avatar is male and 2m tall (about 6.5 feet) I typically just type in 50% in my shape's height and though still pretty tall by RL standards I feel pretty short around other avatars. When I try to go taller though the head seems to looks small, so I just keep my height at 50% and when soemone calls me shorty my come-back is to call them "shrunken head". :smileyvery-happy: ETA: The height was measured by prim, btw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoderickVaughn Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Male Prim height 1.94m (6'4"), Linden Lab viewer 1.74m (5'8.5"). 7.5 inches difference. I definitely don't want to be as short as I am in RL so I'm leaving my avatar right there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloo Uriza Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Using the actually accurate prim height method, 8'3". To be fair, though, I am a kodiak bear, so that's actually a realistic height for my species. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloo Uriza Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 Phil Deakins wrote: I've no idea how tall my av is but, for SL, avs have to be significantly taller that RL people. It's because of the camera that's behind the av. No, that doesn't mean that avs have to be significantly taller. Or even that architecture needs to be. Just that the camera default position needs to be more configurable and perhaps lower. It's kind of unfortunate that the default position isn't first-person view and that functionality is severely limited in first person view compared to the flycam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deej Kasshiki Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 My Fennec av is 5'10" (1.78 m) and my Grey Wolf is 6'4" (1.94 m) according to the Cool VL appearance editor. I can well relate to what others have said here about feeling "small" when standing among the redwood tree sized human avatars that are so common. It seems that the average SL male is over 7' tall and the women not far behind. (Their proportions are usually horrible too with pin heads sitting on mile wide shoulders, T-Rex tiny arms and tree trunk legs but, that's another discussion) Scales are totally off but, we've known that for a long time. Personally I have no issue if someone wants to be a giant but, it makes it difficult for smaller-sized avatars when buying clothes or furniture. I bought some pants recently that included a really cool (moddable) belt. I was surprised that even at the smallest I could make it, the belt was still WAY too large for my Fennec. I switched to the Wolf and it was a little better but not much! Same thing happened with a denim vest I bought a few days later so, it seems that many designers have scaled up their creations for the larger crowd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelli May Posted January 26, 2012 Share Posted January 26, 2012 I also just got a mesh avatar which is 67cm tall - just over 2 feet. Now everyone looks like a giant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coby Foden Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Kelli May wrote: Clearly my avatar is some kind of distorted freak In fact, I consider my avatar to be realistically proportioned: Kelli, that body looks really great. It's like a real female body with nice balanced pleasant proportions. Excellent superb job, yay! :smileyhappy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Kelli May wrote: Many prim clothes I buy are both too large on the height axis and too small on the width, especially waist, bust and limb circumference. So by SL standards I'm not only short but also fat! Note that I don't have a huge bust, but having non-zero body-fat and width sliders makes me too big for many outfits. In RL terms, larger band size, smaller cup size. Clearly my avatar is some kind of distorted freak OMG what a freak!!! You look... human... How... dare you... /coverseyes Even the arms might be right. I'd have to pop it into photoshop and measure to be certain. Anatomy says wingspan = height. You look to be that. That's the number one flaw I see in both male and female avatars. T-rex syndrome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelli May Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Pussycat Catnap wrote: Kelli May wrote: Many prim clothes I buy are both too large on the height axis and too small on the width, especially waist, bust and limb circumference. So by SL standards I'm not only short but also fat! Note that I don't have a huge bust, but having non-zero body-fat and width sliders makes me too big for many outfits. In RL terms, larger band size, smaller cup size. Clearly my avatar is some kind of distorted freak OMG what a freak!!! You look... human... How... dare you... /coverseyes Even the arms might be right. I'd have to pop it into photoshop and measure to be certain. Anatomy says wingspan = height. You look to be that. That's the number one flaw I see in both male and female avatars. T-rex syndrome. Human?! Actually, I'm part raccoon As far as my wingspan goes, it is in fact slightly wider than my height, but only by about an inch. My RL wingspan is also a bit wider than my height. I think it's more usual for it to be wider than less, but on some people it is a little less. Not nearly as much is it is on many SL avatars, especially taller women who are literally unable to make their arms long enough with the sliders as they are. As a little addendum to what I said about fitting prim clothes... DeLa recently astonished me by having a multiprim coat that fit me out of the box with only minor tweaks for position (no size adjustment needed). I went back and bought a aviator jacket and the fit was just as good. So some content creators clearly have an idea of human sizes and proportions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 Oh yes. Quite a few actually do good clothes that will work on a properly shaped avatar. But you do have to remember them when you find them. I'm going to have to pay this place you mentioned a visit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted January 27, 2012 Share Posted January 27, 2012 I just happen to see this article this morning that I thought was very interesting and did relate to this discussion: A Size 2 Is a Size 2 Is a Size 8 http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2012/01/clothing_sizes_getting_bigger_why_our_sizing_system_makes_no_sense_.single.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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