Making a Proper Shape - A Guide to Human Proportions

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---Introduction and Basics---
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- By Vaelissa Cortes

Human proportions are something everyone should know, but few actually take the time to learn. This knowledge is vital to the creation of a realistic human form, yet is rarely even considered. Those who understand how human beings are proportioned often look around Second Life in awe, shocked at the sheer amount of poorly proportioned avatars.

The average Second Life avatar is over seven feet tall with unnaturally long legs and a tiny head. Most people are obviously going for a sexy human appearance, but when they do not understand how actual human beings are proportioned, the results are quite bad and the term "human" becomes questionable. Unfortunately, this makes up a significant amount of avatars on the grid.

Those few who understand human proportions and have taken the time to apply their knowledge to their avatar are often discriminated against due to certain people thinking they are a child. These people assume this because a realistic avatar comes up to around waist level of your average poorly proportioned avatar in Second Life. These people do not grasp that they are actually just ridiculously tall and that children have completely different proportions as well.

When such a person sees an avatar that comes up to their waist, their first thought seems to be, "this person is small" not "I am huge". This issue is a result of people not considering scale when they create their shapes as well as not knowing how actual human beings are proportioned.

Unfortunately, this lack knowledge and most of all, lack of consideration for scale has led to a while slew of issues that cause problems for the people involved. In first life, you do not think somebody is a child simply because they are shorter than you, and you should not think so here either. If you come across a person accusing you of being a child, measure your prim height for them if possible and mention adult body features you may have, such as developed breasts. This will often work fine as most people are simply not aware of their height. However, there are still several people out that are just plain unreasonable and have a set mind no matter what. Many do not want to admit to being wrong or unrealistically tall.

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There are several guides out there that explain human proportions, many are quite useful for Second Life, yet very few cater towards it specifically. Some are full of too many little details that can not be controlled here or are too vague. With this guide I hope to give just the right amount of information to help people better shape their avatar.

Despite popular belief among some groups of people, the shape sliders actually do allow for a rather convincing, well proportioned adult human form. The sliders also greatly favor a realistic height range when the goal is a well proportioned human avatar. Due to this, unrealistically tall human avatars will be unrealistically proportioned as well.

Here are a few notes before we start:

The Height slider does not proportionally scale down your avatar as a whole. Instead, it scales the Arm, Leg, Torso and Neck lengths all at the same time, but in smaller increments than moving those individual sliders by themselves. Using the individual sliders along with Height slider is very useful for getting an exact shape.

Similar results can be achieved by using a shorter Height number, yet longer Arm, Leg, Torso and Neck lengths as can be achieved by using a greater Height number but shorter Arm, Leg, Torso and Neck. However, I suggest starting with centered playing field for everything except Height, which should be on the lower end to start. You will have more room to work with this way should you need it.

Keep in mind that the shape sliders do not use any specific unit of measurement, they are instead an abstact scale from 0 to 100, so don't worry about what the numbers say. The only way to measure the exact size for an individual body part is by using prims. For your total height, you can use a height detector that measures based on prim meters. This is very important since most height detectors only check the agent height, which is different than your avatar's height. I have included both types of detectors in the bottom section of this guide as well as better explanations on how they are different.

The Body Fat slider can help smooth out rough spots, so adding a bit doesn't hurt and often improves the overall look. Body Thickness should be used as well.

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---Why prim height and scale matters---
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Despite what some may say, a real life meter IS equal to a Second Life meter. Many who argue otherwise use a painting as an example; when one paints a picture, the scale of an object in the painting is determined by the size of other objects around it. Since the majority of residents create Second Life objects in the same manner, the size of an object in completely relative. This point is perhaps one of the largest problems, leaving the arguement fundamentally flawed from the start.

For example, let's say there's an art class where everyone was painting their own unique picture on a different sized canvas, if all of the completed works were placed side by side, do you think they would all be to scale with each other? The answer should be obvious.

Second Life is not a static painting, it is an interactive virtual world with set limitations which everyone must work with together to make things not only for themselves to experience and enjoy, but for others as well. Proper scale is perhaps the most important aspect of design, if it is ignored then the results will always be less than desirable.

Second Life includes a measurement system, you can see it every time you open the edit window or move objects along the editing grid. However, most people do not give this any thought, they see it only as numbers that move objects and make prims larger or smaller, but what those numbers represent is completely ignored. This leads to a wide variety of issues.

Most content creators will create an item, piece of prim clothing or animation based on the size of their avatar, they eye it and do guess work for something they feel looks "right" for them. The end result is an item, piece of clothing or an animation that is suitable for their avatar and their avatar alone. Yes, there will be other avatars of similar size and shape, but it will not be ideal for most people. With so many content creators out there using their own inconsistent scale that is based around what is usually an unrealistically tall, poorly proportioned avatar, the grid is in a ridiculus mess.

Due to this complete disregard, avatars, furniture, animations and everything else comes in a very wide variety of mostly large sizes. This wouldn't be quite as much of an issue if everyone and everything were scaled up by the same percent, but this is not the case.

There is a unit of measurement for a reason, it should be used. If people stuck to a proper standard, creating content would be easier for everyone and many current problems would near vanish. Animations would line up properly and would have fewer clipping issues, there would be less hassle when fitting prim clothing, furniture wouldn't look like it was made for a colossus and the Grid as a whole would be a more visually pleasing place.

So the next time you start to create a new shape or item, please take a moment to stop and measure things. All you have to do is rez a cube to check or click an accurate height detector, but it will go a very long way towards making the Grid a better place.

This site is great for converting different measurement systems:

http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm

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---Common Shape Problems---
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This section states several common shape problems that exist in Second Life, which some of you may or may not have noticed. My intent is not to offend, but to educate, please keep that in mind.

Common Problems Explained:

Tiny Head Syndrome:

This is an incredibly common problem, I have noticed that men (or avatars played be men) seem to be much more prone to this than women. A properly proportioned human being will be eight heads tall at the most. However, those with THIS are on average twelve heads tall, with many being taller. This leaves the avatar looking rather silly as it looks like you can squish their head between your fingers. This isn't good, especially considering that many with this issue have the other problems listed below as well. The head is the most important part of a well proportioned figure as the rest of the body proportions are set from it.

Stilt Legs:

This is probably the most common shape problem in Second Life, it often throws off an otherwise well proportioned shape. At the very most, your legs should be a little longer than your upper body height, which is from the top of your head to the bottom of your crotch. Long legs can indeed be sexy, but pushing the slider to the max will only ruin the effect. Realistic legs are far more attractive than long skinny sticks.

T-Rex Arms:

These are short, stubby arms, often with tiny hands attached. Your hands should hang around crotch level, this is covered a bit more in the following guide.

Huge Shoulders:

Another common problem with men. A well proportioned human will have shoulders that are two or so heads wide, a bit of leeway can be added, but keep it under three for best results. Shoulders that prevent you from entering doorways are not natural.

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---Face---
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Faces often define an avatar and are largely up to individual preference. Unlike the rest of the body, it is hard to get a face very "wrong" unless you try. That said, here are a few helpful notes anyway.

Second Life takes care of the eye and ear positions for you, so try to not worry about those as you do not have much control. Just shape them as you see fit, but please use common sense. As for the rest...

The nose should be halfway between the bottom of the eyes and the chin.
The width of the nose should be equal to the space between the eyes. This can vary some based on ethnicity.
The mouth should be about centered between the bottom of the nose and the chin and shouldn't be wider than the distance between the pupils.

Your face length is from your hair line to the bottom of your chin. This is a reference for later.

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---Upper Body & Legs---
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To get your head size, sit on a pose stand and take off any prim hair you may have attached. If you use the built-in Second Life slider based hair you should switch to a bald style since this is what we need. Once that is done, rez a cube and scale it to your exact head size with "stretch both sizes" unchecked.

Scale the cube as you would any object, zoom in to be sure it is exact. When done properly, the very top of your head and the very bottom of your chin will be just a hair's width inside the cube. I personally like to tint the cube to be a bit darker so it is easier on the eyes. I also make it 30% transparent so I can see my head.
Since the average human is around 7-7.5 heads tall, we will use this as the base for our avatar's height. Once the head size has been set, the rest of the body's general proportions can easily be calculated.

Each of the following heads should start exactly where the one before it ended, use the following guide as a reference to about where each head should start and end. Using the head itself as the first "head", we can begin.

The second head is from the bottom of the chin to the nipples. This should range from the top of the nipples to the bottom of them somewhere, do not strain too far away. Remember ladies, breast sliders can affect this quite a bit depending on how you want them. If you have a reasonable size and position then there's nothing to worry about.

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-Breasts-
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Large breasts are often desirable (who would have thought!), just remember that the larger they are, the more gravity should affect them. Keep them proportional to the body type in mind as well; a short woman with a small frame will not have double E cups.

The distance between your nipples should be about one face width for a natural look.
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Moving on...

The third head is from the nipples down to the navel. The position of the navel can vary from skin to skin, but it is generally in the same place. So, if it is a little above or below you are still ok, not everyone is the same in first life either.

The fourth head is from the navel to the bottom of the crotch. This can and more than likely will end below the crotch a little ways down your thigh, which is fine.

That is it for the upper body.

If you resize the cube to be from the top of your head to the bottom of your crotch, then use copy selection on the bottom face, you will have your leg length, the bottom of the lower prim should be about level with the bottom of your feet. If you have eight head sized prims rezzed from before, just make the bottom of your feet centered with the center of the eighth/bottom prim. This will put you at 7.5 heads tall, you can even go down to about 6.5 head's tall for an adult before your avatar starts to look freakish, though I would not recommend it.

Foot size should be about equal in length to one head height. Most women's shoes in Second Life are made for size zero though, which is something to keep in mind if you do not want to worry if your new shoes will fit.

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---Shoulders, Waist & Hips---
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Your shoulder width should be equal to two face lengths, that's two lengths of your face turned sideways and lined up. You can also measure by head width, in which case you would want your shoulders to be around two through two & 3/4ths head widths. Male avatars can sometimes get away with a bit wider, but try to keep it reasonable.

For a woman, your hip width should be about equal to your shoulder width, men should use the above as a reference for their shoulder and hip width, then widen them as they see fit (again, within reason).

For a woman, the waist should ease in and out, not make a sudden dent inwards, which I see far too often. Remember that there are suppose to be organs and squishy bits in there, a size 0 waist never looks good. For men, it should be rather straight.

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---Arms & Hands---
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In first life, the tips of a normal person's fingers will come down to their mid-thigh. However, this does not work very well in Second Life as it make an avatar's arms look too long. Part of this is due to avatars not having very "relaxed", somewhat slouched shoulders in most poses. In first life, you do not have constantly straight shoulders, you relax them and your arms drop a bit. Avatars, on the other hand, usually do not. Most animators choose to keep them straight because of how the SL avatar meshes are; the shoulders are easily destroyed if you twist or lower them much when creating a pose or animation. Moving on...

The base of your thumb should be about level with the bottom of your crotch. Keep your hand size reasonable too, I frequently see people with itty bitty hands and it does not look good. In truth, sometimes larger hands work better for overall proportions than smaller ones do.

About the maker of the Proportion Kit:

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---About Me---
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Q: Who are you?

A: Vaelissa Cortes!

Q: Why are you spending so much effort on this?

A: Because there were no good, thorough shape guides out there and people are uneducated on the subject in general. It would also be nice to see a proper standard on the grid. If people made their shapes and their builds based on prim meters, animation problems, poses not lining up, fitting prim attachments and other issues would near vanish. Not to mention the grid would also look better visually. There is a unit of measurement for a reason, I figure it should be used; it makes everyone's Second Life easier. Creating everything at random sizes on the other hand only serves to make things harder.

Q: What makes you think you know so much about how shapes should look?

A: I have studied human anatomy for several years and am very familiar with the body, there's also knowledge from life drawing classes and I have been partnered (in First Life) with an artist who specializes in drawing the realistic human body for the past eight years. That probably qualifies me for something .

Q: Can I contribute somehow?

A: Perhaps, send me a notecard with what you have! If you have a business or similar, feel free to distribute the guide there. Just getting the word out does a lot.

The "Avatar Proportion Kit - Beta" can be located at the Forum Cartel Hangout.

SLurl: Avatar Proportion Kit

Good post.

The problem with the heights is that it allows you to create male forms up to 7ft 4 inches (approx) and female form up to 6ft 10. It should have been capped from the outset to more realistic heights.

The early Body Shapes makers set the precedent by selling those type of scaled shapes, and almost every creator thereafter followed suit......hence all these oversized tall shapes. I have found that people tend to wear shapes somewhere between 8 inches to 1ft taller than their actual RL heights in most instances. I have seen less handful of Body Shape creators that actually sell realistic RL heights......in fact in one of my shops i have added female shapes going down to 5ft 5 and will probably add more under the 6ft mark.

When i first joined SL, I made my own shape very close to my RL looks....I spent tons of hours tweaking. I set my height to around 6ft 3 (a few inches over my RL height).....and yet mingling in public with other avies i was still a shorty....even compared to female avies. Consequently i upped my height in small steps until I reached about 6ft 10. Nowadays i wear one that is 7ft tall....in relation to the majority of avies around me, it does not look abnormal at all.

Sure there is a market in making Body shapes that represent realistic RL heights...and one that i might indulge in future. I can think of some very obvious good marketing slogans already -lol

Thanks, Briana. I was going to get around to asking you for that kit when you mentioned it another thread.

Being an illustrator, I knew these proportions, but I think my newer monitor distorts images in the width direction, especially in SL. I am having a little trouble determining sizes.

I can appreciate from an aesthetic point of view, the discussion on proportion. And if one chooses to be "short" by SL standards, they should not have to be worried about people taking for children. That said, and by the same token - I see nothing wrong with tall avs - as long as the proportions are kept - again - only from what I personally find attractive to look at and everyone can and should make their own judgment. I find it just as annoying really to be told even non-directly that my size (about the max height for a female if I recall) is too tall. As a woman who is all of 5'3", I relish the thought of being TALL! Finally - so, I for one appreciate the fact that particularly in SL, people come in all heights, shapes and assorted colors.

So speaks the 7' tall, platinum blonde me with the leopard spots

The issue is that at such heights, an avatar's head is almost always too small, suffering from"Tiny Head Syndrome" thus making tall people look rather funny to people who know proportions.

I have never run across someone who is 7' or taller with a head proportioned to their body size.



Pick up the kit and see how many heads tall your body is.

..."realistic" in the realm of human proportions no matter the virtual world platform.

Excellent piece of sanity.

Are the SL default avatars (I think there are 8 to choose from, when you first sign up) realistically proportioned?

Rock

I have a thing about arms lengths. The guide text isn't quite right, or it isn't specific enough, although the diagramme is fine.

Since I made an animation that was wrong if people's arms were unrealistically short, I've noticed many people with arm lengths that would look ridiculous in RL, but somehow they don't *look* ridiculous in SL. I've had plenty of people stand their av up with the arms hanging down and notice where the tips of their fingers are on their thighs, and then stand up in RL and notice the same thing. It's amazing how ridiculously short many people's SL arms are.

I mentioned it in a thread a while back and someone pointed out that at least one of the Library shapes has ridiculously short arms.

Phil, the arm thing has always been a thorn in my side too. Animating for a wide range of shapes is hard enough, but arms are quite possibly the worst offenders - one can't even make an "arms crossed" pose that works universally, let alone more interactive-looking things like caresses and hand holding and such! Discerning animation shoppers often look to the hands and tally points off for instances where they get buried in a cuddle-buddy's body, not realizing in many cases it's the shape that's at fault.

Great post Briana.

Well my head is proportionate to my body and my current avie is 7ft tall- lol

This is not the first time i've come across Body Shape sellers coming out with Human proportions literature...it's a great marketing ploy. Only yesterday we had another Body Shape Producer selling her concept of "Vitruvian proportions" standard in the FashCon group. No doubt someone else will soon piggy back on the "Canon of Proportions" concept....and so it goes on.

It's same when Windlight was introduced, we had a spate of Skinners announce that their new skins were Windlight compatible

Very helpful guide, thanks, Briana.

The height thing doesn't bother me too much, except when short av's are discriminated against - I tend to think of us Residents as just being a tall race on average, a bit like the Swedes, pehaps (only moreso!).

Proportion is another thing, and I can see this guide being very useful for people trying to create their perfect image, although I hope not everybody follows it too much to the letter: those little imperfections are what make us all unique.

My pet peeves, except for the male pin-head thing are spaghetti legs+no shoulders+no jawbone on women. They always remind me of Roswell aliens.

Um.....it's a virtual world....are we really that obsessed?

Very cool guide.....

But I'm gonna have to say, as an artist and someone who spends a great deal of time scrutinizing and observing the human form......from RL expereince....to movies.....to magazines. There's absolutely nothing symetrical or absolute about human proportions. Yeah...we're all put together in the same basic way......and certain proportions WILL make the human form LOOK more appealing (our eyes interpret beauty very differently, and much of that is imprinted on us as babies and young children, nuttin we can do about that)........But.....the reality is......there's people out there who DO have big heads, long arms....long torsos....long hips....short legs....sloped shoulders (it irks me that the sliders don't allow for that)...... There's every manner of variation in the real human body.

What most people do (and if you're an artist who has indeed studied art, and the drawing/painting of the human body & face....then you know this).....is recreate themselves......the form THEY are most familiar with. Now I'm not saying we create exact duplicates.....I am saying we relate to our own proportions and features.....and will inadvertantly duplicate that when we try to draw/paint.....or otherwise form a human. We will also interpret the opposite gender in the form that most appeals to us.

I have been frustrated with the avatar sliders since day one because they do NOT allow for the re-creation of the real human body. They are symetric and boring and leave out so many body details that are what make us individuals. And the same goes for skins.....I've yet to see a face IRL that's symetrical.....who's lips are not slightly crooked or otherwise imperfect.......The left and right sides of the face are NOT the same.

To offer a general guide is an awesome idea.......but I also think that as individuals it's quite alright to think outside of the box and do your own thing, and create what appeals to YOU. This is a 'virtual' reality, after all........and if we want to color outside the lines....then we ought to not be discouraged.

Hurrah, someone finally tackled this! The head proportions thing has always bothered me; far more so than the overly tall avs. 7-8 heads tall has always been my guide, although 'heroic' proportions (of 8-9 heads) are sometimes seen as acceptable.

I don't think allowing male avs to be 7' 4" is a problem in itself. After all, that is shorter than the current tallest living man (and in fact, the tallest recorded woman). The reasons people push their av height taller and taller are well discussed, and there doesn't seem to be any way of dealing with it, short (zing!) of LL altering the height sliders.

Well-proportioned avs are no more enforceable, but a bit of education is very helpful. We might get fewer avs looking like this guy:



<edit> although know I look, Thrud's only problem is tiny head syndrome, the rest of his body is fairly well proportioned. Comically, unrealistically huge, perhaps, but at least No T-rex arms.

Thanks for this Briana. The tiny head and tiny arm thing has been bugging me for years.

Whether the chicken or the egg came first- if an RL sized avatar sits on SL sized furniture they will look as if they are sitting in a joke chair. Right or wrong, our world has grown around us as Land of Giants.

Truly killer guide. Gotta love Vael. =^-^=

People should remember just that, though. It's a guide, not a requirement or rule. Just like having an 8' tall avatar to be "adult" isn't a rule. What Vael offers is an excellent counterpoint to the opinion that scale avatars are "too short". Once in a while, you hear it here. Someone will say:

"I don't care of they say they're five feet tall in RL. That's a stupid excuse. To me they're kids and I ban them."

It's not wrong to turn it around and say "You're too tall". (=_=)

When a short avatar complains about a tall one, the tall person becomes nothing more than a victim of harassment. When a tall avatar complains about a short one, the short person suddenly become AR bait and often ejected or banned from a sim. (>_<

At the same time:

No. In fact, the range of the sliders should have been doubled, and the mesh should have been made more pliable than what we see now. I prefer my Second Life to be without limitations. If someone chooses to be extremely tall, I say let them be. But if you ~do~ choose to be extremely tall, accept that you are and shut your pie hole in regards to the scale of the world around you. (=_=)

The SL Meter is one meter. No more, no less. Just because people ignore it while running the race of 'who can be tallest' doesn't devalue it at all. (^_^)y

That information is great, but I find the tone really annoying. What gives anyone the gumption to tell others what their av should look like? People on both sides of the debate--SL scale for SL avs or RL scale RULES!--prickle me with their self-righteousness.

I only wish the sliders offered a WIDER range of choice. I'd love to parade around 20 feet tall sometimes, and other times, scamper under people's feet at 3 or 4 inches tall.

As it is, I have a variety of shapes I use, depending on the circumstances. Most of the folk I hang with on a regular basis are adamant about using RL scale, so when I'm with them, I scale that way, too. When I'm out wandering around, and don't want to look like I need a step stool to get into a bucket on a ferris wheel, I'll scale up.

It definitely sucks that all the different sizes and shapes makes content creation hard--good frickin' lord I hate adjusting hair--but would people really prefer it if every one in SL were exactly the same size? I'm waaaaay out of proportion in RL, and face all kinds of difficulties and bullshit because of it, I prefer not to have to deal with those kinds of rules in my supposedly FUN life.

Sadly, very true. If people were more aware of proportions and realistic heights, they might have a better awareness of which avatars are childlike, and which are short adults.

I don't think the point was to restrict people to a single avatar shape and height, but to give a guide them to natural human proportions. It's a cliche, but it helps to know what the rules are before you break them.

The animation that I made that caused me to notice short arms has one person's hand inside the other person's tummy instead of where it should be - a bit lower down. It's a very odd anim if the arms are too short

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I don't agree with 7'+ being too tall in SL though. If bodies and furniture were made to RL sizes, then they would look tiny in rooms that allow space for cams to work well. Things have to be unrealistically big so that cams are not cramped up.