Any tips for making myself shorter?

[Myra Wildmist]

I'm beginning to think it's time to make myself shorter. When I started SL, I was usually shorter than everyone else, but, recently, there seems to have been an influx of shorter - probably more life size - avatars in SL. I guess the new default avatars must be shorter.

I like my shape, so I want to stick with that as much as possible. What do I need to worry about to make myself shorter? If I use the height slider bar, will it adjust all the important parts - arms, legs, etc. - proportionately?

FYI, I have another thread about measuring height, here, that's related:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Your-Avatar/What-s-the-best-way-of-determining-your-height/td-p/2091767

[Dresden Ceriano]

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to just lower your height and retain the same proportions everywhere else.  I would suggest that you at least lower your Body Thickness as well.  The rest (such as arm, leg and torso length) you might have to just eyeball to get right.

...Dres

[Syo Emerald]

I see a trend going into two directions, depending on the place. On mostly "hipster" influenced places the avatars seem to tend towards a shorter size, some even hitting an extreme shortness. On other places, mostly those that are "beauty" or fashion related or are "girls" clubs or beaches I see true giants walking around and women tend to carry on with an extreme hourglass shape. They are mostly a bit more than a head taller than my avatar. (Haven't made mine with a real life size, but feel normal sized.)

[Kelli May]

Three important tips...

leg length, leg length, and...

leg length.

Perceived Western standards of beauty suggest extreme leg length, so SL sliders exaggerate this beyond natural proportions. Set leg length low to reduce total height and maintain 'natural' proportions.

 

...or don't, your choice. But bear it in mind as you make your av shorter.

[Aethelwine]

Try playing with these free tools on MP:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Shape-Tools/1835986

 

[Orca Flotta]

Zacly Kelli!

Avi legs tend to be supernaturally long. I just reduced my leg length lately to 50% and they are still very long by all standards. Now according to the height-o-meter in Appearance (which is a lie, I know) I'm 1.66 meters tall, which is 12 cm (more than 4") shorter than my RL body. I love being small in SL, looks much more natural when using vehicles :smileyhappy:

The best thing about using the legs slider is that you don't need to worry about all your other measurements.

[Myra Wildmist]

Orca, you might want to look at the thread I linked in the OP, regarding height. I'll recap what seems to be the final conclusion:

FS gives a slight taller, but close to accurate height.

LL gives a significantly shorter, inaccurate height.

Creating a prim and measuring yourself with it is still the most accurate method.

[Myra Wildmist]

tysm, aethelwine. I bought them and I'll check them out. Awesome tip.

[Penny Patton]

I'm just going to expound on some tips and points other people have already made.

First, it's difficult to shrink a shape. Like others have mentioned, if you reduce your "height" slider, all of your proportions go out of wack. This is because this slider squashes and stretches only certain elements of your avatar. As there is no overall "avatar size" to scale yourself larger or smaller while keeping proportions intact, you're left with no option other than completely remaking your shape at the desired size.

 To make this easier, I've created a set of full perm shapes of various body types and sizes which I give away free to the SL community. You can find them here on the marketplace. It is MUCH easier to mod a shape that is already similar to the size and body type you're attempting to reach.

I've also written two guides on shape making. The first is rather lengthy as I go into detail on both human proportions and bugs/issues with the SL appearance editor (and the SL appearance editor has a lot of bugs and bad design choices, it's painfully obvious LL has never had an art director to help design their creation tools). The second is a shorter version of the first, just the step-by-step guide for making a shape with good human proportions. This is to help you avoid the tiny head, short arms, crazy long legs issues most avatars have.

 

 I'll post this in your other thread, too, but the only 100% accurate way of measuring your avatar is to do it manyally. Hop on a pose stand then stretch a prim from the bottom of your bare feet to the top of your skull. Prims are measured in metres, so whatever the height of the prim is is the height of your avatar in metres.

 The height listed in the official SL viewer is wrong. It's a bug that has existed since SL was first developed. LL claims they will fix it soon. A claim they have made since about 2009 or so when they first realized it was broken. Many scripted height detectors use the same information for the heights they give, so they are also broken.

 The appearance editor in most TPVs, such as Firestorm, display a more correct height, this is good in a pinch but it uses imperfect math fudges to fix the incorrect information LL's appearance editor gives. It's close to your actual avatar height but off by as much as a couple of centimetres to 3-4 inches. There are scripted height detectors that use similar fudges, they're also pretty close but not entirely 100% accurate.

[Penny Patton]

As for "why" avatars seem to be shrinking, there's a couple reasons and like someone else said it's not a universal trend.

These days it's much easier to find information on avatar sizes. For years it was just confusing. There was no explanation for the discrpency in Agent Size (the feature the SL appearance editor and most scripted height detectors of the time used to determine an avatar's height) and prim sizes (which have always been understood to be metric).

 Now we know, AgentSize is broken and LL is just bad about fixing broken features.

 Most "giants" in SL are purely unintentional, when people are actually given a reference for size they tend to aim for more reasonable sizes, unless their avatar is intended to be a giant.

 

Also, more people are aware of how scale affects land use. It's finally sinking in that when avatars and content are upscaled to larger sizes, land is made smaller. Larger content also uses more land impact, meaning you are more limited in both the size and detail of anything you build.

 This has a lot to do with the SL camera placement as well, the default camera is extremely poor for a third person environment. More people are switching over to better camera settings. There's several floating around out there, and some TPVs such as Nirans provide better camera settings. I post my own here for people to try out. I've modeled these after the camera settings used in most third person videogames. Lower camera settings make environments in SL seem much larger and make it generally easier to navigate environments in SL.

 

 In addition some, but not all, of the starter avatars provided to new users are significantly shorter than previous starter sets. They're still exceptionally tall (most of the men are 6'3" and the woman are 5'10", for reference the average height for an American adult is 5'10" for men and 5'5" for women.

 Still, this is only some of the newer starters which are included in a pool of avatars offered up to new users, most of which are still around 7' tall.

 

 Someone else mentioned that this trend towards smaller avatars only seems to be happening with some avatars, while others remain large. This is true. In RP communities, creative communities, people using SL for historical recreations, etcetera, avatars are tending towards smaller, more realistic sizes.

 In more social settings, like clubs, welcome areas, etcetera, avatar heights remain around 7-8' tall.

Also, it's interesting to note that smaller avatars seem more common with women. Men are far more likely to push for avatars that are larger still, and there are mesh avatar bodies appearing which are over 9' tall.

Avatars depicting mythological creatures, like werewolves and minotaurs, are getting larger still since the arrival of mesh, with newer mythic creature avatars being upwards of 11 to 15 feet tall. (For reference, werewolves are normally depicted as man-sized in fiction and the minotaur of legend was only about 6 to 7' tall. Even Tauren from World of Warcraft are only 7 to 9 feet tall.) The irony being that these avatars are much too large for the RP environments they're most commonly used in, and being so large makes them difficult/impossible to interact with other avatars using animations.

[Kelli May]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

Zacly Kelli!

Avi legs tend to be supernaturally long. I just reduced my leg length lately to 50% and they are still very long by all standards. Now according to the height-o-meter in Appearance (which is a lie, I know) I'm 1.66 meters tall, which is 12 cm (more than 4") shorter than my RL body. I love being small in SL, looks much more natural when using vehicles :smileyhappy:

The best thing about using the legs slider is that you don't need to worry about all your other measurements.

---

I wrote that as a bit of 'drive-by' posting, so I'm glad to see it clicked with at least one person . Obviously there's a lot more to it than leg length, but as you say, it can make a big difference to an av's height without changing anything else. On a typical ultra-leggy av, I think one could easily drop the hieght by around 6" purely by bringing leg length into proportion.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Take a prim and attach it to "avatar center" (the last attachment point listed on the official viewer).

Now move it so it is centered in your crotch.

Stretch it to the height you want, but make sure it is the same height as it is wide.

X,Y,Z all the same.

 

Now get into a Tpose and adjust until you fit inside - fingers touching the sides, head and feet the op and bottom. But NEVER move tthe center of that prim from your crotch.

 

[Myra Wildmist]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

Take a prim and attach it to "avatar center" (the last attachment point listed on the official viewer).

Now move it so it is centered in your crotch.

Stretch it to the height you want, but make sure it is the same height as it is wide.

X,Y,Z all the same.

 

Now get into a Tpose and adjust until you fit inside - fingers touching the sides, head and feet the op and bottom. But NEVER move tthe center of that prim from your crotch.

 

---

Wow. That's really helpful, Pussycat!

Thank you so much for posting on this thread and my other one about height. That goes for everyone who has responded to this thread. There's been a lot of very useful information. tysm

[Pussycat Catnap]

Yeah - the core of proper proportions is just 2 things:

midpoint at crotch.

wingspan = height.

- and setting up for that will also give you the 'eyeballing' needed to keep your shape intact as you scale up/down to the desired point.

The "details" on anatomy are a lot more - but in order to make the above things happen, you'll end up having to get some other things right.

Just make sure you don't end up with either an anime head or a voodoo-shrunken head (unless that's your goal). A lot of short people in SL end up with anime heads, and a lot of tall people (especially guys), look like they lost a fight with a head-hunter.

Technically you want your head to be 1/6th to 1/8th of height (I think RL is 1/6, but comic book look is 1/8) - but this one is easy to just eyeball and tell yourself "ok, that looks like SL-me, done, on to the next part."

 

[Kelli May]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

Yeah - the core of proper proportions is just 2 things:

midpoint at crotch.

wingspan = height.

- and setting up for that will also give you the 'eyeballing' needed to keep your shape intact as you scale up/down to the desired point.

The "details" on anatomy are a lot more - but in order to make the above things happen, you'll end up having to get some other things right.

Just make sure you don't end up with either an anime head or a voodoo-shrunken head (unless that's your goal). A lot of short people in SL end up with anime heads, and a lot of tall people (especially guys), look like they lost a fight with a head-hunter.

Technically you want your head to be 1/6th to 1/8th of height (I think RL is 1/6, but comic book look is 1/8) - but this one is easy to just eyeball and tell yourself "ok, that looks like SL-me, done, on to the next part."

 

---

1/6th of height would be a very large head resulting in childlike proportions. Adult proportions are more like 7.5 to 8 heads tall. Anything above 8 heads tall is getting into heroic/superheroic proportions. I've seen SL avs that run to 10 heads tall and more, which are probably the 'man vs headshrinker' avs you have in mind!

As a side note, it's probably reasonable to go with a slightly smaller head proportion in SL to counter the rather bouffant hairstyles we are usually required to wear. Because you can't fit a style perfectly to your head (unless you are using one that is mostly hairbase) hair is a little bulkier than it normally is in RL. So an 8 heads 'idealistic' proportioned av propably looks closer to 7.5 head 'realistic' proportions. Bald guys, you don't have this excuse!

[Penny Patton]

Yeah, 7.5 heads tall is average for an adult. This assumes an average height as well (5'5" for women, 5'10" for men), a shorter person would likely have a laqrger head proportionate to their body. A taller person a smaller head.

8 heads tall is considered "ideal". This is what is used by most artists. Above 8 heads tall and you're into comic hero territory.

9 heads tall is "heroic". This would be the super tall, super muscly comic characters like Superman, Conan, Thor.

You generally do not see characters more than 9 heads tall even in comics, unless you're  talking crazy exaggerated characters like the Hulk. And to pull off 9 heads tall you really need the body to go with it.

 

The SL starter avatars are 9 heads tall or more depending on the starter, and they most certainly do not have the overall body shape to pull it off so they come off as pinheaded. Unfortunately, this is what almost everyone in SL bases their own shapes off of for "average". People trying for "heroic" shapes generally leave their head size as-is but then make their bodies even larger, resulting in 10+ head tall shapes. Because of this, what's "average" in SL looks "off" to the casual observer and extremely misproportioned to anyone familiar with proportions.

 

 My "average" shape is 7.5 heads tall and never had an issue with hair. Depends on where you shop. I find hair that comes with a decent "hair base" wearable tattioo layer can be fitted more realistically. 

[Myra Wildmist]

Hi, Penny. Thanks for the information.

If I understand you, properly, you're using "head" as a ratio/propotion measure and applying it to human ideals of height. For instance, I could be 16 feet tall and be 8 heads if my head is 2 feet tall, but you're applying this ratio to the range of "normal" human heights.

Do I have that right?

I would think these ratios might vary with cultures, but I understand how they'd be handy, especially for keeping my head a reasonable size.

 

[Kelli May]

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Myra Wildmist wrote:

Hi, Penny. Thanks for the information.

If I understand you, properly, you're using "head" as a ratio/propotion measure and applying it to human ideals of height. For instance, I could be 16 feet tall and be 8 heads if my head is 2 feet tall, but you're applying this ratio to the range of "normal" human heights.

Do I have that right?

I would think these ratios might vary with cultures, but I understand how they'd be handy, especially for keeping my head a reasonable size.

 

---

That's how the term is used, yes. They probably do vary a little between different human populations, although I'm sure they vary quite a lot within a given population too. Nevertheless, 7.5 'heads' tall is a very good baseline* for adult humans, male and female.

*despite recommending 7.5 heads, in RL I'm average height but just over 8 heads tall, putting me into 'ideal' artistic proportions. If only the rest of my body was so ideal! 

[Penny Patton]

Hi Myra.

Yes, it's a trick used by artists to achieve specific proportions.

Like Kelli says, it's a good baseline for adult human bodies but it is affected by the size of the character.

In human development, the head grows more slowly than the rest of your body. Here's a good chart to illustrate that based on "ideal" proportions.

It's useful to extrapolate from that for non-human characters and to achieve specific body types.  An exceptionally tall character, like the 12' tall giants from Skyrim, or the 10' tall Na'vi from Avatar, have smaller heads proportionate to their bodies, and longer limbs, giving them a huge and gangly appearance.

 In the opposite direction, dwarves tend to be depicted as fewer heads tall (about 5 to 7 or even fewer depending on the source) with shorter legs (but usually an exaggerated upper body to show strength).

 You can see it in comic characters, too. Wolverine is generally about 7 heads tall because he's pretty short (only 5'3"), a more "average guy" body type like Spider~Man might be 7.5 heads tall, the heroic looking Captain America more like a little over 8, and the incredible Hulk more like 9-10(maybe more depending on how exaggerated his body mass is drawn).

 

This is why it's useful to know this stuff even if your goal is hon-human/fantasy shapes. Every cartoonist and comic book artist swears by this stuff.