Making a Proper Shape - A Guide to Human Proportions

I don't know if this is also true in SL, but in Opensim maxing all the height sliders results in bent-leg syndrome.

THAP

Yes, if you wanted to be the perfect human speciment with the best visual proportions...then Leonardo's (and the OP) 8 heads calculation would be the perfect model....if you wanted a more realistic human (or today's average).....anywhere between 7 and 8 heads would do. It gives you a bit of flexibility and adds a bit of quirkiness to your shape (or imperfections)

As stated, I never go for 8 heads, I prefer 7 to 7.5 as that is more realistic.

Just had to add that little correction!

You keep showing up, dotting the i's and crossing the t's!

Oh yea, she is such a HEAD SNOB.

I am 8 heads and she told me i was a classic Greek Goddess!!

What sort of left-handed compliment was that?! You headist!!

how do you figure? h4 is very accurate in the way it calculates physics.
dont believe me? drop this into a physical cube:
setForce(<0,0,9.8>*llGetMass(),false,false)
does it float? is it coincidence that 9,8 is the RL metric standard of gravity at sea-level?
do you then suppose one could extrapolate a linear meter using gravity and mass?
i'm not sharp enough to do so myself, but there clever people that could.

OMG!

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH NINA MEA!?

I can't recall for sure that Havok 4 was operating in Spring '08? I think it was and that was the last time I attempted a staircase of the kind I'm thinking about.



I don't think I'm sharp enough to pull that one off either but I have found the proportions of a workable staircase need to be on the grand side, like something you might find in a theatre or a hotel. It doesn't seem feasible to build a normally proportioned 'domestic' staircase that won't result in the av attempting to break its neck: the gradient will be too steep.

Maybe physics isn't the accurate term or we simply have to live with certain limitations thereof.

Camera behaviour doesn't work well in a realistically proportioned room either or at least it wasn't doing so last summer. I haven't tested it recently on the latest standard viewer although my impression is that the camera actually became less sensitive to objects like a low ceiling or narrow corridor blocking the view with this latest release.

It's just my opinion that factors like this have led to comparatively bigger, broader more expansive spaces in SL than RL and the resulting phenomenon of unusually large avs compensating for that. That aside, I agree with the thesis that generally av shapes and proportions are atrociously out of whack in SL.

Hmmm. I'm usually about five to five and a half heads tall.

If you build staircases with actual steps, you need to put the steps no more than four inches apart or smaller avatars will not be able to climb them... regardless of the gradient. People routinely seem to build staircases with steps as much as eighteen inches apart to save on prims.

If you want to save on prims, use a phantom sculpty with a solid transparent ramp inside it.

No, no...don't look at it that way. It's not a debate. Your appearance is YOUR choice! What the Guide does is show, in detail, the "accepted" standards for human beauty. By that I mean the proportions that most people agree are "ideal". Not that they ARE ideal...and not that people who don't, er, "measure up" cannot be beautiful. These proportions are a consensus, reached over centuries of debate by artists and sculptors.

The author's point is that most people aren't aware of that debate and its results, unless they've taken some serious art classes.

This is WONDERFUL stuff. I've used a lot of these principles myself, but the author does a much better job that I have with my impromptu little measuring sticks and cubes.

I've also long thought of offering a class in avatar creation/makeover, using these principles. This is a fantastic text and toolset for any such class.

Thanks for making this available Briana!

Rats in my place have to make do with scurrying up the casing.


My steps are precisely 30 SL centimetres and approximately 12 inches apart but at 31 prims, including the rails and casing, I have to say my intention was never to save prims. Even then, 12 inches per step still looks too deep for an av that is supposed to be 6'6" or even 7'2" depending on which scale was used.

I just drew a prim over myself and it's 2.16 metres tall, which suggests Cienna Rand's Av Ruler gives the closest SL height measurement.

Nevertheless I look like a hobbit standing in most rooms I've seen - including my own.

Yes you have. My "true" height is 7'1", my "agent" height is 6'5". I am 7 3/4 heads tall according to the blocks in the kit. Since the proportion guides in the kit and in this thread show 8 heads as normal for a male, I am pretty much on target. My shoulders run 2 1/2 head blockswide, since I used to do a lot of heavy lifting, this is pretty true to life. Even today after 5 years of next to no exercise my shoulders and upper back are still fairly developed. At that height in SL, I find I run toward the upper middle of the pack compared to others. I am taller than some and shorter than some.

RATS?



Well, yeh, 12" per step isn't a staircase, it's an obstacle course! Look at stairs in RL... you'll never see one with a foot high riser!

Yea i was examining you at the party the other day and thinking you were looking good with that hairy chest...Too bad they are not little flexi prim hairs.

oh... FOR A REDNECK, i mean.

You won't see them as low as four inches either. Foot high risers might be a little too much but only by a couple of inches.

Most building codes limit riser height to between seven and eight inches (IBC < 7 3/4", UBC = 4" to 7", six inches is pretty common, and that's in a world where we don't have two foot tall "tinies" running around.

What you girls need to do, is put together a penis proportion guide. ( I know we have enough experience in these forums) Some of the ones they sell look pretty silly.

It's never going to happen.

As much as i like them big...Guys prefer them even bigger.

I've even had a guy in RL with a 9"er tell me it wasn't big enough!

Guys will never be happy and a penis proportion guide would just piss the majority of them off.

How do you proportion a penis for a 7'-8' tall man? There are no REAL indicators: Nose is sometimes accurate, fingers are sometimes accurate, FEET size forget that is a crap shoot, and i've known a tall 6'6" guy with an average size peter (5.5"-6", so height truly doesn't say much.

So this is just impossible...

Many of those men have tiny heads and short arms, so they compensate by making other parts ridiculously large .

This one for 2006 specifies 7 and 3/4 of an inch, which I guess is a happy medium, but lamb sakes I don't think I've lived in a house less than fifty years old in my life and risers were never that low in any of them. In any case, aside from having a 'truer' look to RL, would this work better for a humanoid* av in terms of SL physics?

* With all due respect to tinies, I have to draw the line at what I'm aiming for in my build.

If it goes through the back of another av's head or, worse still, its back then it's too long.

This is why huge stripper hair is so popular.

Ephraim Kappler roars laughing: and why so many skinheads in gay sims look pole-axed.

One reason I use a model with a number of adjustable angles. Makes it easier to hide this effect.