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

I don't say it's not possible (I have avatars in the 4'x" range) but it takes ALOT more effort to keep them from looking ridiculous, with considerably less freedom of form, than it does to blow the same avatar up, and gain alot more fine detail (and since I mentioned details, you'd also need to fix the zooming because right now it's atrocious to work with.)

none of that is to say that I wouldn't love to see more "to scale" work being done, only that LL makes it hard in myriad ways, and until THAT changes, your average user isn't going to care or comply...

(ps I'm a fan or RL cathedral ceilings, and large uncluttered volumes of space... low ceilings are just used as heat traps, and materials cost reduction... two factors that are NOT present in SL)

I'll try and break this down one more time.


Most people in SL build significantly larger than they need to, both to accommodate the camera and avatars. (As pointed out earlier, it's easier to get around SL's camera placement than get people to shrink down when so much content is scaled up.) And they're not just building tall, tall can be fine and certainly has its place, but they expand out in all directions taking up far more area than they need to.



I made two points relating to how it allows for more creativity. One is that it frees up more prims for you to use elsewhere. I don't understand the arguments against that statement. It's a simple fact. You might only save one prim here, three prims there, but as you build it starts to add up quickly and pretty soon you're talking dozens of prims. Or hundreds when you start talking builds that take up a quarter of a sim, or a whole sim.

You mentioned wanting different textures for the floors of individual rooms, you can achieve that easily with a single prim. Building larger people tend to use multiple prims to do what could be done with one or two. I see this constantly, and a lot of it is due to oversizing.

Those prims you free up by building smaller can then go towards adding more detail to the build. More furniture, a lamp in the corner, a roaring fire in the fireplace.

Doomed Ship is a great example of this. Only half a sim, but the ship seems both larger and more detailed than many full sim builds that max out the prims. I'd chalk much of that up to the individual rooms and corridors being smaller than what you often see in SL.

The comment that building to scale limits creativity because "because you are then restricted to scale." is baffling. If you build in an environment that has no regard for scale, it severely limits your ability to use scale for effect. Having a scale to work in allows you to use scale as an aspect of your designs. Small, cramped rooms. Huge, intimidating throne rooms. A cozy little cottage. A sky scraper reaching towards the heavens. A short and stocky dwarf, a tall and dashing knight, An even taller barbarian, and the monstrous cyclops that towers over them all.

It's very much like they teach in art school in the fundamentals classes, knowing proper human proportions gives you the knowledge of how to exaggerate those proportions more effectively to achieve the look and effect you want. There's a lot, and I do mean a lot, of huge buildings in SL, but very few evoke any real sense of scale.

That's the other point I made was regarding avatars specifically. The height range is skewed towards taller avatars, with outright hostility against people using smaller avatars. This has locked SL as a whole into a limited range of av sizes. Pushing the average height down would broaden the range of avatar sizes we'd see around the grid.



See above. I'm not saying that being smaller makes something more detailed, I've said again and again that it's the fact that you can build a structure in fewer prims which allows you to devote those prims towards other details you'd otherwise have to exclude!


You can build to scale in SL. Not everyone knows that. I've met people, many people, who've argued that you cannot make an avatar under 6' tall that looks good. By and large, most people, including some content creators who've been in SL since the beginning, have no idea how tall they are, and have never given much thought to the matter.

Yes, it's possible to build to scale. But not all of the tools are there, at least not those that need to be in the SL viewer. You need to be savvy enough to measure yourself manually against a prim, or find a scripted av ruler that isn't measuring your bounding box. SL itself is the best evidence that most people, including most experienced builders, will not go that far out of their way to build to scale unless they understand the benefits. Hence this thread.

Is this what they call a cat fight?

Quoted for F'ing Truth.

I do not think, that avatars grow so huge, because of not knowing better, but because of psychology:

I had this experience recently, where i bounced into a group of 4 avatars, all very tall and slim, barbie-like to put it to the point. And they started to argue with me about my shape, telling me to enlarge my legs, put more flesh to my hips, making bigger eyes and put them wider apart... Do you see the driving forces ?

So i guess whatever guidelines will be set up, avatars tend(!) to grow to max and apply to basic human "attractor-patterns" (large hips, big boobs, Superman-chest etc.) just because the true life limitations which force us to live with what we have been given by nature, simply do not apply in a virtual world. So telling the average avatar, that it may be a good idea to keep in the mid range, probably won't work.

I see 2 solutions to break up the "tall avatar syndrome":

1.) i bet, the best way to go would be to create an "avatar-genome" which limits the shaping-values for each avatar on an individual base. But i am sure, nobody will want to hear that And i also bet that everybody will start generating new avatars until they got one which fits best to the wishes.

2.) If there would be more to scale builds or slightly oversized builds (due to camera- and teleporting- constraints) then the oversized avatars might realise eventually, that becoming a bit smaller has got advantages... And i know some very tall men in RL, who are pretty unhappy about hitting the top of the door way too often, not to speak about the simple physical problems coming along with exorbitant body-height...

But please take this as my personal opinion on that theme without telling that the one or the other comment in this thread is right or wrong.

and, after all...
have fun

Another point just pops up in my mind:

Assume, lindens would simply rescale the definition of 1 meter by a factor of 1.5. Would people then start arguing, that LL is cheating on us, because a sim owner originally has bought 256*256 square meters and now he/she ends up with "only" 170*170 ?
Will people start to complain about "shrunken sims", or will they get happy because scale to build has become "normality". And after mouning for a while, would people start creating smaller builds then ?

Assume further, that after some time suddenly LL would redecide and go back to the old definition of 1 meter. Would the folks then say that LL has been so generous and all our land has become soo much bigger/wider ? Or would they complain about avatars have been shrunken down to dwarfs ?

Anyways the truth is, that nothing has effectively changed besides the redefinition of a measurement unit... interesting ... psychology ...

cheers,
Gaia

Uhm, simply put, No.


#1 - They have no idea how tall they are. Experience proves this when over the years i have had people tell me i am short and then when i rez a ruler or tell them their height, they are shocked.

#2 - Penny is dead right when she says there are many content creators who have no idea how tall they are and have never thought twice about it - which has nothing to do with psychology

#3 - The vast majority of shape makers are people who had maxed out height sliders to start with so all the shapes they create are variations of the max height give or take a few inches - usually the difference they make between male and female shapes. Once again - absolute ignorance - no psychology.

Sure psychology has something to do with it to some degree, but i have only seen this evidenced by the reaction of men. Several guys have had me redo their shape - and after they travel or go to a club, they IM me to tell me they had to make themselves taller because they felt so short compared to the other men - so much for being comfortable with who you are - even in SL...

So, speaking at the psychological angle, sure lots of men adjust their size upwards because they have ego issues and don't want to feel diminutive around other men. The rest of the populace however is either totally ignorant of their height or do not care.

Every day, and i do mean EVERY DAY - someone makes a a remark about my being "short", at which point my height hud quickly tells them - YOU ARE 7'11" AND I AM 5'6" - i even muted some idiot after he told me that i needed to be taller with bigger boobs -- he can go fist himself.

Don't call me short when your legs alone measure 5-6 lengths of your head out of the total max of 8 head lengths for a properly proportioned body.

Huh??

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me.

I think you are way off when it comes to this height thing and you really do not have the experience of being a normal height avatar to back up any of the things you said.

It is nothing like you have mentioned at all.

Briana,

i am pretty sure, that almost everybody here is measuring his/her height against the shapes of their friends and neighbours and NOT against the absolute measurement units. And as you say, i get the same remarks on my body-shape way too often (which is about 172 cm). Isn't this just another example of psychological pressure (or name it "evolutionary pressure" if you like) ?

But ok, i may be wrong and indeed people do not at all care about that issue. But then it is more than valuable to build to scale since then they eventually can not ignore their height any more

Again just my 2 cents here.

At the arrival point to my club i had a accurate height meter and people would freak when they saw how tall they were.

The majority of people have no idea at all how tall they are. Once they see me, or someone my size, they MAY wonder either "Why is she so short" or "am i way tall" - and sometimes that is enough to spark enough interest for them to investigate and then make the decision to take on a real world height or simply to just reduce a little bit.

For what it is worth.

Men generally look "o.k." up to 7'3" (Unless they made their head really tiny, at which point they just look odd).

Women look tall, but not freakish (well, i guess that is subjective) up to around 6'8".

The problem with women who are tall in SL is that they usually have smaller heads to start with, so a small head on top of a long body is often what results.

If you need a proper height measuring device. There is an avatar proportion kit at the hangout or i can always be asked for one and will happily send it.

Maybe a missunderstanding ? I was not talking about rescaling the avatar height. I was talking about rescaling the definition of 1 virtual meter, which affects avatar height and environment sizes. How can you conclude from that, that i have no experience at all ? I feel a bit like you are telling me, that i am talking bullshit. Did you mean that so ?

anyways, what i want to point out is the fact, that scaling is relative and not absolute. And this is why i am pretty much with Penny's arguments, just to say it... But that doesn't matter i think.

anyways,
keep having fun
Gaia

What would be the point of that?

I think you are right in that. People look around them and see everyone is their size so they think it is o.k., and are not using any measuring tools whatsoever.

I cannot say that i believe it is 'psychological pressure' directly. It is more of a natural flow of things. You look to your left and to your right and see that you fit in and you think everything is fine - because it is - until they realize they are 7' - 8'6".

So i guess we are going back and forth on minor semantics perhaps? I would never call it a psychological pressure because the pressure is absent.

If on Orientation Island there was a chart that showed how many avatars were over 6'8" compared to how many were below that number, then i think that would be psychological pressure as people would be aware of the fact that they are sliding into those statistics based on the choice they make of complying with the majority or the minority - i can see that as pressure.

All in all, i think the entire height issue is a passive one. As i have said, most people have no idea until they measure themselves - which may not happen for months, or years, if ever at all.

When i did pass out the Avatar Proportion kit, i sure did get A LOT of people telling me they had no idea how tall they were.

No, i do not mean that all.

I just mean your experience is perhaps different than mine since i actively let people know what their height is, and how to fix it - and everywhere i go, i know the height of everyone within 60m of me.

I am just trying to say in my time in SL i have noticed a direct correlation between being tall and being ignorant of how tall one is and often times when people find out, they change it - if only slightly.

Though your example on changing the value of the meter woke up the resident techno-ferret.

So you have way more to deal with now than me.

That our way of looking at proportions in SL might be coupled to max avatar height and NOT to the definition of the virtual SL meter ?

Which was the goal of that remark )))

That's just silly.

Uh... No.


This is silly:

LOL.... cool.

This whole thread has become silly. If you're a good builder -- and most people in this forum are -- then build good buildings. Scale them appropriately. You're going to drive yourself nuts on a crusade to tell people across SL what they ought to look like. Just let people be dumb.

Ferrets love everyone, and they want your children!

http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens5520882module42206742photo_1245859526baby-ferret.jpg

This is sillier...

I can't top that picture, Bri.

Why is that silly ? If i am so wrong, then would you mind to give me a word or 2 of clarification ? Or is my assumption so weird, that it is not even worthwhile to explain to me, why it is crap ?

Didn't say it was crap, said it was silly. There's been a bunchload of messages in this thread explaining the problems caused by oversized avatars, starting with the inability to make oversized avatars if they're all oversized, and working on down from there. If you still don't think burning that into stone (or carving it into wood, if that's how you mix your metaphors) by actually redefining the meter to match is silly after all that, how do you expect a ferret to do any better?