Making a Proper Shape - A Guide to Human Proportions

The height distance between floors sort of make taller steps a requirement, or the stairway won't even fit in one oversized room. I usually make mine 2xz=0.333 & 1xz=0.334 in order to keep a set of three steps at 1.0m. Granted this is just over 13" high per step, but I lay an alpha ramp anyway, so no biggy.

Outdoors I usually do z=-0.250 which is close to 10" and can't recall anyone every having trouble with them.

I have a similar one by Freehy Korobase, which is undoubtedly the best freebie I ever found. It's no spam, full perms and a hell of a lot better looking than any I've seen on the market.

And I think I've 'inspected' just about every type there is.

My AVs shape is originally from .::NOON::. with some slight tweaks, but not many. I had some versions of it that were quite heavily modified, but I didn't like them so I went back to the one closer to the original.

Anyway, at the behest of this thread, I decided to check my proportions and mess with my shape. I am one of those 7 1/2' tall AVs with my height slider at 100. My body is 10 heads tall. Honestly, my shape looks ok, I have seen shapes where the head was obviously *too* small for the body.

I tried a few things. First, I tried to shorten myself to 6'4" (my RL height) and tweak the head-size, neck length, torso length, leg length, body thickness, and shoulder width to fit in an "8 heads tall" setup. Well, the results sucked. My head looked way too big and I looked way too small.

Second, I tried to take my current shape and just make the head bigger. It looked a bit "wrong" though, so I changed it back after trying it for a few hours. I think perhaps my legs are just a bit too long, maybe that's the only part I need to change.

Really though, my shape looks ok, so maybe 10 heads high is fine. Perhaps this problem is simply the result of having a gigantic avatar.

So your idea of real life stairs are those horrible things (that you'd call a ladder if they weren't fixed in place) that you get in old row houses, eh?
Should. Climbing stairs got a LOT harder with Havok4. They improved things somewhat, but I think it's safest to err on the small side.

I've seen ads for "bits" that have a mode to go half-alpha on command so they sort of fade out instead of poking out the back. Stealth dicks.

<.< yeah, seen them a lot. It's a nice feature.

I went shopping with some folks... hate to say it but furry bits seem to be leading the pack on innovation there O_o

o.O
I /definitly/ need to go out more!

I usually lay invisible ramps over all of my stairs so only the look of it matters to me. I wish more people used invisible ramps over stairs too. It makes it so much easier to walk up stairs carrying your honey in your arms.

Oh, man, that's a great point. Vehicles have even a bigger problem with oversized risers than tinies and chibis do.

Snob.

I'm not a snob, I'm a cripple.

I guess there's no answer to that except to suggest you ignore my comment in the other current height-oriented post.

On who.........

Vaelissa,

You have Private Messages turned off, so I'll ask you here...

May I have your permission to use your proportion kit in a class for newbies on Building an Avatar? You'll get credit.

Or, would you be interested in TEACHING such a class yourself? If so, IM kelley Griffith at GQ Start or Carl Metropolitan at NCI.

Yes, they are...

It's not too bad, most days I don't even need a cane, but climbing steep stairs can get a bit much.

Yes, its good for anyone to use - even your newbie class on avatar building. Just expect there to be some missing gaps in the guide and the tools to be less refined than a complete kit - which is why i put "beta" in the title.

I put 2 copies of each shape in the box - 1 set is NO MOD so it never gets ruined.

Vaelissa has no time at all for teaching at NCI. Between RL and SL she is booked.

So booked that i answer questions for her! YAY!

If you need me to show you how to use the tool, just give me a ring.

What really works well is sinking your alpha ramp down just a little from the top edge of the step. I make the top of the ramp z=0.035 from the top edge of the step. This is the amount I have found works well and gives a subtle bobbing motion to a person or vehicle moving up or down the steps, which looks more realistic than going up or down a ramp layed right on top.

I think this is great for begginer shape builders. Many just try to play with the sliders. If you have no concept of why things look odd, you can quickly get discouraged and just buy a shape. For me one of the greatest joys of SL has been building my own avs.

Definately keep the guidelines in mind and then learn when and how to break the for effect.

Even an SL sized avatar sitting on SL sized furniture usually looks like they are sitting on a joke chair.

The problem is that rooms in SL have to be unrealistically large; if you build a space with realistic sizes the camera angles are impossible. About the smallest room you can use in SL is 10x10x5 meters, and even that is cramped, but that would be a HUGE room in an RL house.

Once we have those huge rooms, we build huge furniture so it looks reasonable in the rooms. But then it's too big for the avatars. It's impossible to solve all the scale problems without major technical changes to SL, perhaps emphasizing first-person view more and eliminating the expectation that you can see everyone in a space at once (which you usually can't do in RL). I'm not saying I'd LIKE that world better; I don't think I would.

Cars are usually sized to match avatars rather than buildings, so they always look like toys when you park one in front of your house.

When I designed Ceera's original form as a Human, I designed her Shape based on Anime character proportions. So she started out as roughly 6 heads tall, with the leg to crotch distance three heads, and torso length 2 heads. Her facial structure, especially eye size, tends to Anime proportions as well. Over time this has shifted a bit, in the direction of more "Realistic" proportions, based on what works well with certain animations, and what always required adjustments.

It's been a while since I formally compared my proportions that way. It would be interesting to see how she comes out now, after thre years of minor twealing the proportions, while keeping her reported height constant.

That wasn't an entirely empty claim. During my time in SL there have been two major changes in graphic rendering; when local lighting was introduced in 1.10, and Windlight in 1.19.1. (I understand that there was an earlier one with the introduction of 1.7, but I came into Second Life just AFTER that.) In both cases there were additional changes in the way things were rendered, moving in the direction of more modeling of light and shadow and away from a "flat" look. And in both cases, there was existing content (notably including skins) that had included exaggerated drawn-on or baked-in shadowing that looked good in the older viewer but bad in the new one. I know of at least one major skin designer who redid her entire product line shortly after 1.10 was released.

And for avatars that need a relatively flat appearance to look right, there is no workaround. We just have to put up with looking like we're wearing skin paint instead of fur.

I once had to use a cane for a few weeks after injuring my knee at soccer practice.

More women hit on me during that month than at any other time in my life.

Does your wife worry?

Go ahead...be fluffy. You know you wanna...