Measurement ratios for realistic avatars.

Walking about inworld I ran into two other residents and spoke to them about wanting my SL avatar to look like my real life self.

Another resident mention a measurement conversion to get everything just right.

anyone have any idea or am i barking up at tree that doesn't exist.

It really depends upon how deep you want to go into the rabbit hole. Shapes are the tip of the iceberg. A complete look could involve a custom skin, custom shape, custom prim hair (or skin embedded, for short hair), custom clothing, and custom animations. Each of those components would contribute to matching the RL look you are looking to mirror inside of SL. Shape alone will only go so far. I eyeball my shapes from detailed reference photos of the head and body from all angles (remember the artist's thumbnail).

I agree with Nam.

My thoughts -

Shapes are more an art than a science. The numbers on the shapes arent in inches or centimeters or any mesuarement so I dont see how you could convert RL mesurments.

The numbers in the middle ranges of course are more likely to fall within human realisitc proportion than those numbers on either end of the scale.


With enough Photos I will attempt to do custom shapes but results vary.

Nam has shown a much more realistic approcah before involving converting photos as a face skin. (which I find very impressive)

as discussed in other threads, the avatar's height probably should be about 1.15-1.3 times their RL height.. otherwise your avatar will appear to be a dwarf compared to the rest of the SL world, even if you're a giant in RL. Once you have the height right, it's all so much more "visual" than "measurement"

I agree for the most part with Winter... I've played around with a good few shapes and generally work by eye as far as I can... but the results all tend towards the cartoony, more doll proportions than what would one would observe on a RL person... but the assuption that one must stand 20% taller than they do naturally just to fit into the world grates a bit...

<soapbox = on>

To be honest, I have great difficulty understanding why there's a need for everybody in SL to present themselves as overly tall... I mean, I can count the number of men I've encountereed who are less than 6 feet on one hand... There should be no need to conform to upping your av height by a clear foot just baecause "everybody else is"... I can only assume that at some point back in the day when there were only a few thousand users, and has just become folkloric... "No man shall stand under slider height point 75" and as such, it's stuck ever since...

On a technical note, if you do plan to work from life; a realistic avatar will, in part, require an actual factual normal sized person to base it around; otherwise any representation would be flawed off the bat... resulting in a more stylised appearance. Bearing in mind the seeming requirement for gigantism inbuilt into the world; unless the person you're taking measurements off is six foot ten, all your proportions are going to go awry if you start upping the height sliders to get them to "fit in" with the crowds...

<soapbox = off>

OK... sorry... I'm done...

Kalli (5'1" in-world)

Take five pictures of your head: Frontal, Left profile, Right profile, Back, and top. Print them on transparent overlays. Overlay the pics on your monitor. Shape your face on the game accordingly.

you couls also upload the pics as textures, put them on a box, put the box over your head, make it transparent, and use that to help shape your av.