Tuesday 12 February 2019

Body shape

Index: Assets: Avatar components:Body shape

Body shape


A fairly random list of tips how to make a good body shape. Originally posted by me on the official Second Life forum, with corrections and additions by me, Geena Davies, AyelaNewLifem, janetosilio, Rhonda Huntress and Alyona Su

  • General
    • Your basic looks is a combination of shape and skin and different skins may require very different shape settings.
    • Keep tweaking. Even if your shape looks good at first glance, you'll probably notice annoying details after a while. And don't forget to take backup copies!
    • Start with the body. It's easier to do than the head.
    • The sliders are not in any way balanced. Do not even think of starting with everything set at 50. If you don't believe me, read this (if you dare).
  • Height
    • Average RL human height varies a lot between different nations. Wikipedia has a table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide. You probably want to go a bit taller in SL since everything else tend to be scaled up.
    • The height readout you get in the standard viewer's edit window is way off. Firestorm's reading is fairly close to the avatar's actual height inworld.
    • The sliders that affect overall height the most are are: Height (obviously) and Leg Length
    • Head size, Neck Length and Hip Length  will also affect overall height but not very much.
    • Torso Length does not affect overall height significantly. It only adjust the ratio betwen torso and leg length.
      Special for people not familar with metrics (that is 'mericans): https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/length/feet-to-cm.html
  • Mesh bodies and heads
    • Mesh bodies and mesh heads alter the proportions significantly, different brands and models in dfferent ways. So if you use mesh body parts, you have to adjust shape to match.
    • Mesh heads increase the size of the head so if you use one, you need to adjust accordingly.
      All common mesh head models from the well known brands have a very prominent "duck bill" mouth. It's not possible to get a really realistic look with one of those but you can minimize the effect by reducing Lip Fullness and Lip Thickness.
  • Ears
    •  Size and position: If the top of the ears align roughly with the eyebrows and the bottom roughly with the space between mouth and nose, you shouldn't be too far off. Except, that's not actually possible. The SL/opensim avatar has ears palced very low on their head and it's not adjustable.
  • Eyes
    • For realism, keep eye size below 50 but not that much. Around 35 may be a good starting point.
  • Mouth
    • Keep the Lip Width low. At 40 you are already in Julia Roberts territory. (She has a lovely mouth actually but you really don't want to go much wider and most people have considerably narrower mouth than she has.)
    • Lip Ratio should probably be kept below 50. A realistic ratio is usually somewhere between 35 and 40, depending on your skin and the Lip Fullness and Lip Thickness settings.
    • Mouth Corner: From 60 and upwards you start to get a clown grin. From about 49 and downwards you start to get the dour face that was so popular in SL for a while (and may still be). Stay somewhere between for a realistic looking mouth.
  • Arms
    • Arm size just long enough you can reach your crotch when standing straight. Maybe a little bit longer but not much and certainly not shorter.
    • 80 is probably a good starting point for Arm Length.
    • For a female avatar you probably want crossed arms right underneath your berasts, if only to avoid problems with animations crossing them insde your breasts.
  • Hands and feet
    •  Keep the hand and foot sizes low. For modern female avatar that nearly always mean set those two sliders to 0. For male and old fashioned giantess avatars you may want it a little bit higher, but not much.
  • Shoulders
    • Typicall shoulders should be about twice as wide as the head for a female and 2 1/2 times as wide for a male.
    • If you want a realistic look, your shoulders also need to be broad enough so your arms hang naturally outside your hips. (And yes, this is true even for the most pear shaped female avis!)
  • Torso
    • Actual torso length depends both on the Torso Length and the Hip Length sliders. Balance those to get your belly button in a sensible place. This may depend on which skin you use.
    • Asians tend to have relatively long torsos relative to their leg length, Africans relatively short. The difference is ratehr subtle though.
  • Breasts
    • For female avatars (of course): Large Breast Size+Low Breast Buoyancy=Silicone Implants
  • Hip width
    • Adjust Leg Muscles for good looking legs, then Hip Width to get your legs together (without overlapping) and finally Saddle Bags to change the actual hip width.

2 comments:

  1. All solid advice, but I would honestly recommend against setting your hand slider to 0 -- I once got criticized for "baby hands" at slider value 30, which I thought was funny, and upon closer inspection, they were absolutely right. Obviously for furry avatars this is going to be a bigger issue, since animal heads tend to be proportionately larger even if you size them down, but even for a human/oid avatar, 0 is just too small most of the time.

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    1. It's a good point but please note that I say "for modern female avatars". Males generally need larger hands and so do old fashioned huge avatars. When it comes to non-human avis, I don't think it's possible to set any general rules.

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