Trying to based off my real life height

[Locke Nider]

which is about 6'0.  But for some reason, he looks short.  Not in comparison to other avatars, but he just looks short in general.  Something just seems off.  Perhaps it's my monitor?

[Ceres]

Try changing the length of your torso, hip and legs into different settings until it makes your avatar look as if your legs is longer than your torso.

Second: Change your camera offset/view angle setting either in the Preference or Debug.

Third: A picture of you would be good.

[Penny Patton]

I'm in the middle of writing an article about the appearance editor and getting good proportions from it when making a shape from scratch, which is basically what you need to do when scaling down from SL's supersized default shapes. I'll try and share a few tips here.

First, ignore the height displayed in the appearance editor. It is wrong. LL has acknowledged this is a bug it intends to fix but they've yet to actually fix it. I recommend using a prim to measure yourself, as prim sizes are measured in metres which can be converted to feet/inches. 

Second, it helps to have a good understanding of human proportion itself. SL's appearance editor provides no help whatsoever in this regard (a painful early misstep by Linden Lab that they have yet to correct) so to make a good shape you really need a better than average understanding of the human bodyshape.

I recommend using Google to image search for "human proportions" or "figure proportions" to get some illustrator's guides to human proportions.

 

This is a good one illustrating four different body types, from "average man" to "super heroic".

It helps to know a few basics to human proportion. Most of these proportions can be deviated from to within about 3 inches while remaining "realistic". Much more than three inches and you begin to look odd.

1. The average human is 7-7.5 heads tall. 8 heads tall is still realistic, but is not as common and considered idealistic. 

2. As seen above, whether "average" or "idealistic", the width of the torso (to the outside of arms while at your sides) is two head units wide.

3. Your "wingspan" (the measurement of your arms from fingertip to fingertip when stretched out side to side) should be equal to your height (from the bottom of your feet to the top of your skull). The way SL arms bend sinks the shoulders into your torso slightly, so allow another couple inches. On men around 6' this means setting the arm length slider around 60-70 or so. On women it means setting the arm length slider around 90-100.

 Because most avatars have extremely short arms this may  seem strange at first, but keep your arms at a proper length for even a few minutes and it begins to look natural and much better than before, because this is consistent with the human shape you see in every day life outside of SL.

 4. The size of your hand is roughly the size of your face (bottom of chin to halfway between eyebrows and hairline). Yes, most avatars have scary small hands.

5. Your legs should be about half your total height. Guys can go to a as much as a few inches shorter than half overall height, women can go to as much as 3 inches longer than half overall height . Most avatars have legs that are way too long.

6. Your feet should be about as long as your forearm measured from beginning of wrist to start of elbow. Most avatars have scary small feet.

Pussycat Catnat took an earlier post I made about getting good proportions and added some helpful screenshots. In the article I suggested that using prims to thoroughly check all proportions helps in creating much more appealing shapes than if you try to simply "eyeball" everything.

 I highly recommend checking out the blog post here. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

Penny's advice and the blog on proportions will get you there.

My avatar's are all "Short" in that they're under 300-feet tall ( ), but many of them actually look tall when not next to some of the victims of the medival rack-torture you might find in SL clubs.

Adjusting not just the various things that affect height, but also width, can give you a taller appearance. But it is all about a balanced approach using multiple dials to achieve any one single effect.

 

 

[Penny Patton]

Here's a screenshot to prove that correctly sized shapes don't have to "look short". All of the heights shown are correct "prim based height, which is about half a foot shorter than the incorrect height shown in the LL appearance editor and many scripted height detectors.

 

 

[Malate Banufong]

That's some brilliant and helpful work Penny.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Penny should open a shape store.

Much as I decry people who charge for shapes, feeling that anyone can turn the knobs - these frequent threads of late seem to be proving me wrong and I guess there really is need for a shape store from someone who knows anatomy / proportions.

 

[Deej Kasshiki]

Based on all the male shapes I see who are 7' tall with shoulders as wide as Texas, the torso muscle sliders cranked to 100, painfully short alligator arms and tree stump legs I'd say yes, many are in need of shape guidance. It would be great if LL included some realistically proportioned starter avs and maybe some general notes on avatar customization.

(The glamazon ladies with the enormous prim boobs, snake thin torsos and wide load butts aren't any better, btw. Don't want you ladies to feel left out :smileywink:)

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

Based on all the male shapes I see who are 7' tall with shoulders as wide as Texas, the torso muscle sliders cranked to 100, painfully short alligator arms and tree stump legs I'd say yes, many are in need of shape guidance. It would be great if LL included some realistically proportioned starter avs and maybe some general notes on avatar customization.

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Yeah...

Agree there.

[Melian Catronis]

To make yourself approximately 6'0"  you need to actually make yourself about 7'0" in SL. The size issue is pretty common when you first rez--I wanted to make myself my RL height, which is 5'0", and after about the fourth time of being told 'we don't allow child avis in this sim' I realized I needed to adjust my perspective. I had to make my avi about 6'0"  to be proportionally 5'0" inworld.  Nowadays I've adjusted my height up to where I'm somewhere between 6'11" and 7'2", depending on who's measuring. The taller avi makes my clothes fit better.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Melian Catronis wrote:

To make yourself approximately 6'0"  you need to actually make yourself about 7'0" in SL. T

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Entirely incorrect.

To make yourself 6'0" in SL, you need to just make yourself 6'0" in SL.

Penny and I have both got guides on how to do the proportions, and Penny has a guide on scale as well.

Here's my proportion guide:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/

You'll find that to have human proportions and not those of an anatomically incorrect monster, you tend to have to be within human scale. Especially for females due to the arm slider issue, but also somewhat true for males.

 

Its fine for you to have a preference to be taller than a human being and not proportional, but that doesn't make you short and proportionate.