Building to Scale (Why you should, and some tips!)

ceera has a point, in that it's not a matter of "make it and they will come", it's a matter of "make it the way it works for the customer, or the customer never shows up"...

but it surprises me that in all of the threads on scale no one ever addresses one of the basic reasons why avatars are created so large.... sure there is the false perspective, the fitting yourself to the status quo, but there is another problem... that is very basic and easily cured by being an oversized av...

the bone and joint structures in the av mesh are oversized for a relatively midline av scale, and the only way to reduce/remove that is to make the av larger.

is it possible to make more in scale average choices and avoid that? only to an extent, which frustrates people, and even those like me that try to create a natural scale av, find it hard to work around, especially when I could easily just blow it all up and erase the problem all together. full body rheumatoid arthritis or looking like a SF ball joint robot are NOT attractive

I also have to agree with Rolig's position... most builders know and lament the problem, but you have to go with what the market wants.

As a matter of fact I tried exactly that height for rooms in an earlier version of my home and I was very happy with it until I realised that the teleport feature wouldn't work for a reasonably tall avatar of 7 foot. I say 'reasonably' because the visual scale of SL actually encourages everyone to build bigger than necessary and avatars are a little bigger on balance because of this.

Having said that, I sometimes regret that I went with a 5 metre ceiling height because I never use local teleports anyway - I'll immediately leave a build that relies on them - and my avatar looks like a midget in certain parts of my building just because I didn't want to put guests to the inconvenience of having to come downstairs on arrival.

On the other hand, I recently built a maid's stairway leading up to my as yet non-existent attic with an interesting cubby-hole beneath it and this feature only just works with the current scale. It would have been a no-go if my ceilings had been as low as I originally intended.

Argent Stonecutter made an interesting suggestion about camera control permissions () which might very well solve the issue for serious builders who want to take trouble with scale but that requires Linden Labs to implement the option.

As it stands, I think the Lindens need to do something drastic with a better avatar mesh and a more reasonable limit on height in the 'Appearance' sliders - and sooner rather than later - if issues of avatar height and the scale and proportion of builds are to be resolved. Both measures will cause ructions of course because older builds will have to be redone and skin and clothing businesses will be knocked out of whack but least said soonest mended as my old Grandma used to put it.

She was a fount of sensible clichés.

Actually, this isn't the problem some make it out to be. A number of shape makers currently provide body shapes in the 5'-6' range that look fantastic. My own avatar is 5'9", and I don't suffer any of the problems you bring up. I sell avatars with body shapes as small as at least 5'4", and they don't suffer these problems either.

Sure, there is a minimum height at which the av mesh cannot go below without deformities, but it's somewhere below the 5'-6' range.

I don't udnerstand what you are saying.

I am 5'6" in SL and have never ever had any problem with my av mesh or joint/bone structure.

And i have friends from 4'10" to 6" and they have no avatar problems either.

I don't understand what you are saying about the problem with the av structure that requires one make it large avatar.

If that is the case you scale the car down. A car in a video game isn't build with materials so scale is not a factor.

Maybe not for you but everyone else on the grid would be rioting and screaming bloody murder. They changed the position of the appearance button on the pie menu and it was the end of SL, sky is falling ect... Change the camera and people will not be happy. People get used to how things are and do not accept change well. If you want a different camera angle then you change it and leave everyone else alone. lol



This only would work if you used the same texture on the entire floor. When I build a house each floor panel is specifically designed for the room it is in... In the bedroom I like carpet so I use a carpet texture, in the dining room I like wood floor, in the living room carpet, in the bath room tile... Same goes for walls and every other part. The same amount of primes would be used no matter the scale. That is if you want to keep the same quality... The only way I would save any primes is if I used 10x10 primes in the large build then scaled it down to half the size. Then I would have 5x5 primes and in anyplace I have 2 side by side primes with the same texture I could combine them into one (this is your point I assume). Most of the rooms I build are based on one floor prime however so I would not save but only a few primes in the larger rooms maybe living room or basement but we are only talking a few primes saved. Anymore primes in each room would be overkill for size... How big do you really need a bedroom or kitchen ect... I am sure any place with HUGE rooms may save a few primes but I really don't see it being enough to make much of a dent in prime usage for anyone other than someone using an entire sim to build one building. Cutting a build from 2:1 to 1:1 does not mean a 50% reduction in materials. Also in my opinion Mega primes should not be used in any build until LL decides to make them officially supported.

I don't disagree with giving avatar height info. I don't see how it will change anything at this point though. Most people bought their shapes and most of those shapes are no mod. People would be very pissed off if they all the sudden had to buy a new shape. The more you change things the less faith people have in their investment and the less they will invest because they have no security in the purchase if they think what they buy today will not work tomorrow. Look at the Homestead/Openspace deal for example.

I see your argument for more primes by building smaller but I don't think what you suggest will give enough more primes to really make enough of a difference to make these changes worth it. The only way it would make enough difference is if we did opposite and cut avatars to half scale.

It just seems to me you want more for less using the excuse of more creativity and better building potential. The suggestions you want would cause a lot more harm than good in the current grid...

Someday however SL will have to evolve to a new level and everything we have now will have to be scrapped. The way technology is progressing in virtual worlds that day may not be far off or LL is going to loose out. It will become the NetScape of virtual worlds if it doesn't come out with SL 2.0 and soon.

Wow what a weird thread with some very odd opinions.

Penny is right. Period.

Maybe, but it isn't going to change anything.

Huh?

I find your opinions in this thread to be absolutely useless and way off base. And the word is "prims" short for "primitive", not "prime".

Not only does Penny know what she is talking about. She has the experience and time in world to back it up.

Things will change without a doubt.

This is what happens when you build beyond scale:

With all due respect, Brianna, quite a number of contributors to this thread have the experience and time in-world to back their opinions up. And a good deal of experience in RL to boot.

This issue is not only a matter of personal taste but also one of technical constraints - with a big question mark over what might be regarded as a logical height range since RL measurements really do not have a logical correlative in SL.

I don't think building tall ceilings is building "beyond scale". I wish more houses in RL had 3.5m ceilings instead of 2.5m ones.

With all due respect, quite a number of contributors to this thread have the experience and time in-world to back their opinions up. And a good deal of experience in RL to boot.

This issue is not only a matter of personal taste but also one of technical constraints - with a big question mark over what might be regarded as a logical height range since RL measurements really do not have a correlative in SL.

I have been building in SL since 2005 myself... I also do enough drafting in the real world to understand scale. No, things will not change until SL is re-written and started over. You know why? The less efficent people are at building the more money LL will make in land tier. Why would they hurt their bottom line? Remember when SL started they wanted to charge by the prim! They would still be doing it if they could. Tell me why a few hundred more available prims in a sim is going to change the grid? LL could have easily already made all these changes and are very well aware of the issue. They didn't add the height because they wanted things to be way out of scale. Money in the bank for them. Don't be nieve. If they add it now (the height thing) because it is wanted they very well can because it won't change much and they can bask in the glory of listening to the customer. I find it funny people bash LL for being idiots but they know exactly what they are doing.

Flaming has no place in a rational discussion between people with different opinions. Many of the people who have commented have a lot of talent and years of experience building in SL. It's fine to disagree. Just keep the personal jabs out of it.

I would not agree that Briana is "flaming" anyone. She is simply stating an observation. It is incredibly odd that anyone would argue that significantly reducing the size of a build does not present opportunities to reduce prim count, or that attempting to create an avatar to scale would result in issues with the bone and joint structures. Such arguments simply have no real basis in reality.

Becka's statement that reducing the size of a building by 50% will not result in using half the number of prims is correct, but I do not believe that was ever suggested as being the case. Reducing the size of a build, especially if one is not using over sized prims, does present many opportunities to reduce the number of prims used, significantly so if not by half and as we should all know, "every prim counts".

That is why I have been so adamant about building as closely to scale as I can with my own role-play sim, Doomed Ship. If I had not built at such a reduced scale, much of what I've accomplished there would simply not be possible. If I were able to reduce the scale to a true 1:1 ratio, I would certainly be able to achieve more with the half sim I currently have available to me.

I will let my work speak for itself on this matter.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Desperation%20Andromeda/70/10/1002

As for Void's statements about the avatar, that is simply not true. None of my personal shapes exceed 1.9m and most are significantly shorter. I provide a free set of ten shapes, five men and five women, showing a selection of realistic and stylized proportions which can be achieved in avatars of a more realistic size.

I provide this shape set for free at Doomed Ship and also via xStreet, though xStreet considers body shapes to be "adult content".
https://uncensored.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1262445

It is also true, however, that working to scale is very much an uphill struggle so long as height information is concealed from users. It is also true that providing this information now will not have an immediate effect.

Still, it is my experience that when someone is presented with their height information they are genuinely surprised and many would rather create their avatar to a specific height should that information be known from the start. Few current users are likely to change their avatar size after investing so much time in their current appearance, it will primarily be the influx of new users which contributes to an overall reduction in avatar height and content size which will eventually, after some time of course, encourage most current users to follow suit.

Personal jabs?

uhhh ok??

What was personal???

If anything, maybe she will stop calling prims primes? but hey, Jig used TEH forever before she stopped that so who knows.

And i did not come in the thread to argue the issue, but to state an observation.

"Weird opinions being expressed" and that "Penny is right".

I have enjoyed your Doomed Ship build. Very nice and thankyou for the wonderful place to play.

To the point.
Most people don't build to 2:1 though. Most that I have seen build 1.25 to 1.5. So reducing to 1 from that is FAR from substantial. You would save maybe 10% on a average house and maybe 15% on a larger build. Thats why I said you would have to cut avatar scale in half to make it worth anything and LL won't do that because they would sell less land and make less tier. Is that worth changing the entire building foundation of SL over for everyone? I don't think so. If you want to build 1:1 then all the tools for you to do so are already there.

The other point of Penny is building to scale gives the option for more creativity. This I cannot understand because you are then restricted to scale. Being able to go outside normal scale gives you infinite creative options (what is creative to some isn't for others but we should not dictate what is and isn't).

Another point of Penny is that building to scale will promote better detail. This is not true. The detail level of something is not based on scale but how much effort the creator wants to put into it. You can copy something from RL and disregard absolute scale and make it look just as detailed (most people will have no clue what the original scale in RL was anyway). If the creator did a crap job on detail without scale there is little reason to think he would have done any better job going by scale.

The ability to build to scale has always been available in SL. I don't know to many builders that don't know this, even rookie builders. They simply choose to build to what looks right to them. If that is ugly to you then thats your problem. Why force them to limit their options by having to build to some scale code? That hardly adds to creativity.

I don't take offense to what Briana said. Anyone can say "No" and Penny is right period" and your opinions are strange and useless and leave it at that. Adds nothing to the discussion. If her main point of discussion was pointing out my spelling of prime instead of prim and saying I am wrong with nothing to back it up then that is her option. All I see is her patting Penny on the back which really isn't helping Penny's case any as Briana has added nothing specific to the discussion to backup Penny. Just because Briana has thousands of posts and 2003 by her name doesn't carry any weight with me.


I think Ceera Murakami is right period. Why? In these forums is doesn't seem to matter why. * Bows down and Pats Ceera Murakami on the back....*

Do I think Pennys opinions are strange and useless because I don't agree? Not at all. In fact if everything she says was implemented in a new grid it maybe very nice. However I don't see the current SL as the place to do such. If you want to buy a license from LL and build your own grid with those parameters then go for it. Thats what LL wants people to do anyway.

I have said enough so last post.

I wish Penny well in her agenda for change and her quest for higher quality is and should be applauded .

This is what i said.

NOT: Strange and useless

So weird how people want to put words into my mouth to twist conversation. No one said that your words were "strange and useless".

I love how my rez date comes up when i don't even say anything. WOOO HOOO!

Also, as with any given field of work or hobby or whatever. If person "A" says they have been in that field for "X" years and yet uses incorrect terminology, then other things "A" is saying regarding that topic may get overlooked under the assumption (and perhaps a false one at that!) that "A" does not know much at all about that matter at hand if they cannot even grab the terminology after 4 years of hands on in the field.

Just sayin...

It is both.


Doomed Ship is a perfect example.

Penny Patton is god-tier content creator. She knows what she speaks of, people.

Shhhhhhhh!!!!

Penny and Sveid don't know anything.

They don't know nuffin at all.

Sveid spends her time creating awesome detail at a scale that only ants can see.

And Penny spends her time attaching belts to her Pectoral attachment points.

Go figure...

Such a pity.

If she only bought some sculpts off SLX, retextured them, added gratuitous glow, and slapped a 20000 L price tag on them, she would be truly 1337 builder and her name would be feted through the land. Sveid Moody would be a nice company name...

LOL.

Moody.....LOL $$$ = No.

Sorry, I lied... One last post... Good night.