Question on Feet & Hips

When doing extreme high heels that are over 100 high. How do you animate this? Do you point the feet down through the floor and leave the hip alone or do you point the feet at the floor and move the hip up so the feet are not sunk into the ground in the animation program?

I'm not sure I completely understand the question.

Modifying foot shape to achieve the look of high heels is something that is accomplished by the shoe clothing itself, and not animation.

High heel shoes have two affects on the avatar. One is modifying the avatar shape such that the feet are appropriately angled. Second, the avatar height is adjusted to account for the height of the avatar.

When animating, in most cases, you do not need to account for the whether or not the avatar would be wearing heels. The shoes, not the animation, does the necessary calculations.

Sometimes you see dance poseballs in which tall avatars appear to dance with their ankles below the ground. (And on the same poseballs, shorter avatars will dance with their feet above the ground.) This isn't caused by the animation itself, but as a function of the poseball script.

Ok maybe i'm just misunderstanding how the shoes affected the environment. Your explanation helps.

I've got a shoe design that is a bit taller then the standard 100 that the slider can go to. I'm positioning the avatar's feet to be pointing down at the ground to accommodate this design. When I animate the avatar do I need to move the hips/body up so the toes are above the ground and floating a little bit to take the shape of the new shoe into account? or will the shoe object naturally pop the avatar up so that the shoes touch the ground and don't go into it?

I would have to test it in-world, but you should just add the height of the heel to the hips. The hip's Y position is what determines the height of the avatar above the floor.

The shoe becomes phantom when you wear it. All prims become phantom when you wear them. SL only knows where your avatar is touching the ground so you do need to move your hip offset upward. It will probably take a few tries but you should be able to find the correct offset to use that looks good in-world. Also, if this shoe is being designed to be sold you might want to make your animation work for an avatar of average height.