Question for the Body Shape Gurus - Do RL proportions look right in SL?

OK, so I want my avatar to look like me so I thought the easiest way to get an original and correct body shape was to just match my avatar to my actual head, torso, arm and leg proportions.

I took a couple nude full body pics of myself in poses similar to the default avatar pics from a waist high angle and then did some screen shots of my naked avatar in game.

I then made my pics 20% opaque, overlaid the pics of my avatar and started adjusting and redoing the screen shots until features lined up as best as possible. Strangely the arms in SL are quite short and the height of my breasts was hard to match with the torso aligned but I got it as close a possible.

Then I put clothes back on my avatar and was surprised to feel that she really did not look "right". The design of most long pants really makes it worse (she looks better naked but then again what woman in SL doesn't ).

In a panic I found an "Ideal Proportion" scale graphic and overlaid that on my RL body to find that I am actually very close to ideal in RL (yay me).

So my question is has anyone that does a lot of body shapes here played with matching RL proportions to avatars and ended up feeling they were not "realistic looking" as strange as that seems? I am not sure if I should abandon my shape to look more SL "real" or keep it.

Any comments or tips hugely appreciated, this is probably a lot more important to me than it should be lol.

Yup, i've found it to work nicest (as long as you're after realistic results) to have the torso length, the leg length and the arm length all match each other (i.e. set them all to 50, 70 or whatever) This has indirect effect on making you appear more or less thin (taller character with these 3 parameters set to 50 looks like they have more meat on the bones than character with shorter height, but these parameters at 70+ ... just another way to control your appearance in addition to body thickness/fat sliders.

Must say i didn't get that effect you speak of -- i tried to emulate real proportions and it didn't turn out looking weird or anything ... but when you get surrounded by all these 7' tall girls with the butt ending behind last corner and breasts twice the size of head .. then it can make you feel out of place, simply because you don't match. o,O;

Yes, I am wondering if it only looks odd because so many other avatars have unrealistically long legs on very short torsos.

I've done what you did, in essence, except that I made measurements of myself, then made a 'rig' in SL showing what widths, heights, etc. I should end up being. In order to get everything the proper scale for my real body, I ended up having some pretty strange values...

I'm 5'10" tall, average build, so in order to get that (178cm) on a male avatar, I had to shrink my height way down. Note, that most of the 'av rulers' are wrong - in my case, off by about 6 inches. It says I'm 5'4", but I'm the right scale for SL objects.

Here's basically what mine look like:

Height: 4
Body Thickness: 0
Arm Length: 90
Torso Length: 55
Leg Length: 82

In the end, I look mostly like me, but the face is still a little off.

The face is so hard, every change I make I second guess myself that it was closer before.

WOW you're brave! Full-body nude photos of myself ranks waaaay high up on my list of things I NEVER EVER WANT TO SEE.

lol, I had to resist the urge to photoshop out some blemishes even though they were for personal use only.

Its kind of creepy to see yourself overlaid on your avatar.

I'm interested in this because I think the proportions are pretty ...unusual... in SL, but my interest is for a different reason.

(I'm also VERY impressed at the amount of work you've put in on the topic!)

I don't want to look like a duplicate of me IRL, but I do want to look like the BBW that I am. I don't mind being taller (the 7' girl issue...) but I do want to be big. Could you post the kinds of length and height proportion numbers you came up with?

I’m happy with the shape that I have, but I would like a sort of reference to “ideal proportions”. I had some shoes custom fitted the other day and it was unsettling to see most of my leg and torso numbers in a different shape on another girl. The shoes fit very well, but it did make me want to explore my shape….again….!

Interesting...

I am fairly particular about my Avatar's height. Ceera is supposed to be exactly 5'7" tall. Every time I make a new avatar for her, (a new type of furry, or a Human, etc.) I measure her with an avatar ruler that I have, and adjust the values to make her 5'7" tall. I tend to make her a bit leggy, following closer to the body proportions of an Anime or Manga character, but the height is precise.

Or at least, I thought it was... I didn't think to cross-check that Avatar Ruler against, let's say, a prim whose metric height is the exact equivalent of 5'7" tall. I shall have to do that, as more than once I have had people comment that Ceera seemed rather tall to them.

In building, I have noticed that the default door sizes and ceiling heights are much larger than one would do in RL. We make high ceilings so people can TP to us and not end up on the roof, or on the next floor up. That means at least 4.5 to 5 meters, or about 14 foot tall ceilings. Like in a Victorian era home. The default size of the "Door Deluxe", if you use that script from the SL Scripting Library, is actually almost twice as large as a real door would be today. Given that so many people make their avatar something close to 7 feet tall, I can see some of where this comes from. But even at 5'7" tall, as measured with an Avatar Ruler, a door built to RL scale looks much too small - like something from Alice in Wonderland. I have found that making them about 1.5 times as tall and as wide as they should be looks about right.

Another experiment that I shall have to do when I get in-world is to check the mouselook camera height. Ideally, a first person camera perspective is at eye level above the floor. So for me, at 5'7" tall, my 'camera' should be about 5'3" above the floor. I suspect that the actual height that SL places it at in Mouselook is somewhat off from that. This would cause a perspective shift, making things seem the wrong height.

On Orientation Island I tried to "un-buff" my AV to look as close to just average "me" as I could. I wound up being the only player of SL who couldn't buy clothes that fit as the chest and back were sunken enough to look deformed.

After two years of wearing the same clothes, I decided to un-un-buff myself in order that I could wear something else.

The base avatar structure is more fantasy (or certainly movie star-ish) than reality and even with those zillion sliders, you cannot bend the fundamental structure to get as real as one might like.

(In a former life, I did some anthropometry analysis for an organization that I cannot name using measurements from about 800,000 real people. People vary wildly, SL AVs don't.)

I started with my own pics but when I wondered if it was me that was out of proportion I found this guide...

http://www.users.qwest.net/~eponine/FemaleProportion.jpg

If I scale it and overlay it on a pic of me it lines up almost perfectly. I then used it with screen shots of my avatar and adjusted it the best I could. Torsos and arms need to be very long and unfortunately if you get the torso the right length the breasts will be hard to get in the right spot.

For a little more realistic body width this one lines up well too

Not Work Safe
http://www.users.qwest.net/~eponine/vwoman.jpg

I can IM you some numbers if you like for proportions although since the hieght of the breasts is a problem I backed away from realism a bit.

I can't believe no one asked: "Send me the pics and I'll see if I can fix it for you."

I'm 6'3" tall in real life and wanted my avie to be about the same..he seemed a little short. So I measured him with the sizing tool someone else mentioned and he was 6'7" So clearly rl doesn't match up to sl. But that's ok, I would get the basics down and then just tweak in game until it feels right. The height and proportions probably won't be the same, but in the end you'll hopefully get something you're happy with.

Your idea is a very innovative way to go about this though, let us know how it goes.

Cheers,
Skip

Height rulers operate by examining 'bounding box' (simplified shape used for colission detection and such) ... and this box is always smaller than actual size of avatar, plus doesn't take into account things like prim hair etc. Results in 4-5 inches of difference generally, and sadly can't really do anything about it :<

Curiously enough the measuring tape that comes in Library has the card which states average height of SL avatar is 2.1 m (6'10"

Those offers have been coming in via PM

I did a test in-world yesterday. Made a prim that was exactly 1.7 Meters tall, which is the equivalent of 5'7". Then I kicked off my shoes, touched the avatar ruler, and stood next to my 'measuring stick'.

My avatar, wearing a Jakkal's Werehouse Red Fox avatar and prim hair, appeared to be a good 8 inches too tall. The ruler said I was 5'7", but the top of the 5'7" tall prim next to me was even with my chin!

I could understand it if the 'bounding box' method resulted in a height that was too tall for what you actually were. I would rather expect the bounding box to be larger than I am. But the implication is that the bounding box is smaller then me...

I looked at the source code for the avatar ruler, and the conversion factors for the script seemed right. I guess the real issue is that SL doesn't report av height correctly.

So...

Before the end of the day, I plan to have a simple visual height measuring system created. It will consist of a textured 'yardstick' as a locked prim, with Metric and English measurements on alternating faces, and a second prim to line up with the top of your head, to get the reading. I will make it available as a freebie, at all my stores, and to anyone who wants a copy. Look for a box that will be labeled "Free Avatar Yardstick".

I did my av to represent my real life height (5'2" and I looked like a wee stump.



Atleast I can be tall in my second life.

We also do it so that we can get camera angles that let us see everybody in the room. If you make an SL room in a size that would be realistic in RL, it's claustrophobic; you can't see well enough to move around in it.

Eponine, if you match an 'ideal' proportion so well, you must be stunning. Most people are only 5.5 to 6 head length tall.

Actually, it's difficult to match real life characters with SL. In part due to the way the character is constructed for viewing, and in part due to the camera. I don't know the exact details of why. But the camera distorts the character quite a bit in various positions. That's why you can have it looking close, and then when the camera moves, it's all wrong.

I've run into the same problem. The best you can do is the best you can do. For me, it's been a series of small adjustments over time.

I initially wanted a 6' tall avatar. I realized after touching an avatar measuring object that my first attempt made my 6'8" tall!

I resized to 6'4" and I think I'll just keep it that way.

What's bothering me are that there are so many wasp-waisted buff *male* characters.

Back on topic: RL proportions should look ok. It will just take a lot of doing to get it right. RL proportions might look ugly inside SL only because the majority of avatars have more aesthetic proportions (... well not counting those who give their avatars really strange proportions).

Ceera, were you able to make this "yardstick'? I looked around in the the forest store and could not find it...

~Jenni~

Sorry Jennifer,

My best customer dropped some more orders on me, one for custom clothes, and one for a sky build. I've been tied up making those so I can get paid for them.

I will do that yardstick, and fairly soon. I'll post here when it's available.

No Problem hun! I fully understand!!!!

Good luck with your projects and let us know when the yardstick is available!...

~Jenni~