Smaller feet, breasts etc

I made a small avatar. It is a fairy made it as small as I could, using modify appearance, short legs, short torso etc. The problem is that the feet, breasts, hands and probably head are too big at their smallest.

How does one make small avatars that are proportioned correctly?

For that matter How does one make avatars other than appearance or adding prims?

Is it possible to make a tiny avatar, a Fairy?


I apologies for my ignorance, I am new at this, and do not have the lindens to but the stuff I want.

I have yet to see a well proportioned small avatar. That's one of the reasons everyone in SL is so freakishly tall. The avatar model has to be super human sized (according to SL's meters) in order to meet correct body proportions.



You don't.


Yes, but not if you want realistic human proportions. So called "tinies" were a fad for a while. With the right techniques, it's possible to make a reasonably humanoid looking avatar that is very, very small.

I never made a tiny myself, so don't ask me to explain all the how to's. Perhaps someone else will be kind enough to explain it. I could guess at how it was probably done, and I'd probably be correct, but I don't want to tutor you on something I've never done. It wouldn't be right.

With just the Appearance sliders, the lowest limit of avatar size is 3'10" tall for a female, and a bit taller for a male. And yes, at that size body proportion is terrible.

A "Tiny", as Chosen alluded to, is a prim body wrapped around a scrunched up avatar body. You see, it's possible to use animation overrides to fold and mutilate the avatar in ways that would make a professional circus contortionist faint in terror... You can actually scrunch them down to about a 0.5 Meter sphere. And in that mutilated shape it is still possible to attach prims to various points and to use custom animation overrides to wiggle those parts in ways that more or less makes the tiny prim body move like a real body...

Most Tinys, as a result, have round little bodies like overstuffed teddy bears, to hide that scrunched up real form. This can be incredibly cute. I have a white fox Tiny for one of my alts that is an absolute heart melter. Those Tinys that can't completely conceal the folded body use invisiprims to hide the rest of the "real you". But this method still can't make a very convincing small Human. The result looks like a stuffed animal or a toy robot.

The major catch with using a Tiny is that all the movement animations must take that scrunched form into account. Take a "Tiny" out on the dance floor and try to use a dance animation, and they distort horribly. Same if you have them sit in a scripted chair or use any other furnishings not explicitly designed for them. And don't even think about sex animations...

I'm hoping that when the new sculpted prim feature is available, we will see better quality avatars including tinies. But the issues with the animations will not change.

You can add prims with attachments, "remove" sections of the basic avatar with invisiprims, or use animations a la tinies to "shrink" the avatar. There's a freebie collection associated with Avatar Toolbox that includes a Tinies AO and an Invisiprim.

I can put small prim feet? I assume I am stuck with the larger breasts which is OK for a fairy!

A real small fairy need not be perfect. It would fly only. Just do not see making a human form out of prims! But would be a seller if you did it!

Yes. It works the same as the invisiprims used with high heeled prim shoes, which hide the ugly "heel" extruded from the avatar mesh when you specify heels height in the Appearance sliders.

Furry avatars use incisiprims a lot, to allow small round hindpaws and digitigrade hind legs.

I have seen one trick on a tiny fairy. There are some "followers" they generate a winged "fairy" about 0.3 M tall. It's just a static image on a partcle, so so matter which way you view it from, you see it from the same angle. I suppose you could hide the avatar entirely and use a particle image as the 'fairy'.

One note. Invisiprims also interact with normal prims like floors and water, if they are using 32-bit textures. So you see strange "holes" in things near invisiprims, some times.