More Vitruvian Shapes!

1.2 of the free Vitruvian Shapes set is now out and I've added two new shapes.

5'6"/171cm African Woman's shape.

4'11"/150cm Japanese Woman's shape.

This brings the total up to 12 shapes, 6 male and 6 female. I've also added a screenshot showing several full avatars using these shapes, compared to two of the Linden Starters.

The tallest Vitrvian avatar here is my remake of the SL "Action Male" starter at 6'3"/192cm. The original Linden "Action Male" on the left is 7'1". The fantasy style dwarf on the right is 5' even.

Just to reiterate, the Japanese woman shape, which is the second from the right, is 4'11"/150cm. She is 7 and 1/4 heads tall with wholly adult proportions. I kept with realistic, if idealized, proportions here, but I could reduce her head size and increase her leg length if I wanted to give her a 6' tall person's proportions while keeping her at a Japanese woman's height of 5-5'5" tall. I could probably cut several more inches while maintaining adult proportions before I ran into issues.

Just to entirely put to rest this common notion that you can't make good looking adult avatars shorter than 6' tall.

 A lot more is possible with the avatar than people realize, it seems so limited mostly due to the poor/broken interface. It's actually easier to accomplish attractive/realistic proportions in the 5-6' range than at the oversized heights people tend to use, because the limitations of the shape sliders are skewed against the sizes LL themselves encourage people to use.

 The difficult part is getting down to the smaller sizes in the first place. When you start with a 7' tall shape you need to adjust EVERYTHING, essentially creating a new shape from scratch, just to get down to the 5' range. And Linden Lab insists on forcing everyone to start with a 7' shape.

 Once you have a well proportioned 5' shape to start with, it's much easier to customize it within that range. This is why the appearance editor should provide multiple body types, all in different height ranges, for users to start with. That tiny, easily implemented change would make creating a custom shape much easier for users of all skill levels.

Mesh Content Creators, You're Doing It Wrong!

Mesh is filling SL, which is great! I've recently redone Milk & Cream using as much mesh as possible and already people are telling me how great their framerates are despite the detail and sheer amount of content around the island!

I get an average of 30FPS around the new island with these graphics settings.
Shadows, Ambient occlusion, depth of field, etcetera.

I got 5-16FPS around the old island, which was mostly sculpts.

However, in building this I noticed one common thread in mesh content being sold in SL. Mesh content creators are building at the same sizes as they did with sculpts and prims prior to the introduction of mesh import and using that size as the basis for their advertised Land Impact costs. (When they're not outright lying to their customers by stating the number of mesh objects rather than the prim/LI cost, but that's another rant.)

 "Well, of course they would! Avatars are still 8' tall on average, and the SL default camera is still stuck in the 90's! They have to work around that!"

 Sure, to a point. You have to remember, mesh content gains Land Impact cost the larger you make it. I've literally cut the LI cost of mesh buildings in half by shrinking them down to a realistic size as opposed to the size the creator sold them at.

I was able to cut the LI cost of most of the mesh content down anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2!
This means more content around the island, which is still occupying only 1/4th of a sim!

 Lower Land  Impact costs are a boon to content creators because customers are often looking for the most bang for their buck in terms of detail versus LI cost. Higher LI means people can't fit as much in their land, and land is expensive!

 Before people point out many SL users can't even resize a prim I'm going to agree and counter that it is simplicity itself for a content creator to include both an "efficiently sized" version, the LI cost of which is what they advertise, and a scaled up version for more typical SL users. This takes, literally, seconds to do and costs the creator nothing.

 I'd add that content creators should make it clear in their listings that all LI costs are of the efficiently scaled version, and that a larger version is included with a higher LI cost. Most mesh sellers already note how SL changes LI costs based on size so this is a minor addition to what they're doing already.

 Ideally, Linden Lab themselves should be pushing more efficiently made content by improving the starter avatars, default camera settings and Linden maintained environments such as the infohubs, but since LL seems intent on driving customers away it would benefit content creators to encourage the trend towards efficient scale because it allows them to do so much more, and allows for an SL that is more appealing to new users, who in turn become new customers of the content creators.

Don't you wish all of SL was this detailed? It could be!

 In providing both the efficiently scaled version and the large version of their mesh content (as well as an explanation of why they are doing this and instructions on how to improve the SL camera), content creators ensure that their customers have the choice to use what better suits their needs, and and customers get exposed to how they can get more for their tier just by scaling down.

"I want less land and fewer prims, for the same amount of money!"
 - Nobody, Ever

Most people are simply unaware of the issue. It's in every content creator's best interest to make them aware of how size does matter in affecting their SL experience.

Linden Lab Strikes Back Follow-Up

So, a week ago in my previous post I talked about LL's practices in dealing with reported SL bugs, and how they tended to ignore or dismiss many very valid complaints.

With this particular issue, the person who reported it was urged by Oz Linden to create a patch and submit it to the Jira, after which Oz turned around and closed the Jira telling the person not to re-open it or they would be banned from the Jira.

 Well, the reporter did not open it again. To the contrary, they decided to back out of SL development entirely.

However, another concerned resident did re-open the issue, probably because it is an issue worth being fixed. Or, perhaps because residents are simply increasingly tired of and agitated by LL closing bug reports and leaving the bugs unfixed with no explanation. In either case, a third party reopened the Jira with a plea that LL deal with the problem.

 Less than half an hour later, Alexa Linden closed the issue "Won't Finish".

 That evening, the reporter found they had been slapped with a two day ban.

 Yes, you read that right.

If you have ever submitted an issue to the Jira, or do so in the future, Linden Lab may ban you for it regardless of any actions you do or do not take after the fact.

Linden Lab Strikes Again

 Apparently the creator of my favourite SL viewer, the one I take all my best looking SL screenshots with, is bowing out. Niran will be releasing one more viewer once materials are ready and then backing away from SL viewer development for the foreseeable future.

 Why?

 Well, the straw that broke the camel's back would be Jira issue Open-162, where Niran pointed out that the attachment coordinates for the SL avatar asymmetrical.

 What's this mean?

 Well, it means that when you wear identical attachments to both of your upper arms (or shoulders, or upper legs, or lower legs...) and give them the mirroring attachment positions, they should align symmetrically....but they don't. They're just noticeably off.

Screenshot from Open-162

 Now, this is no big deal to the average user, but it is a significant workflow disruption for content creators, giving us extra math to deal with, and making it difficult to automate things like mirroring newly created attachments.

 Niran brought this up to Oz Linden, who told him to submit a patch to fix it via the Jira. So Niran put in the work to create just such a patch and submit it, then Linden Lab immediately closed it. The first Linden to close it at least provided a reason, although the reason they gave made no sense as they were mistaking the actual problem with the symmetry of the avatar mesh.

 Seeing the misunderstanding, Niran opened it again, and several people provided comments trying to explain to the Linden how they misunderstood the issue.

Linden Lab concerned about realistic bodies?
Also, what does this have to do with attachment points?

 A few people did voice concerns that fixing this would break content, but these fears are largely unfounded. Yes, existing attachments would be shifted. Most users would never notice. Those who did notice would be able to adjust their attachments back into place in seconds, with very little effort.

 Niran even posted some scripts for automating such adjustments, but I'd say that's overkill.

  Even so, a second Linden closed the issue, with no explanation. Niran opened it again and so Oz, who originally told Niran to open the Jira and put in all this work, closed it with a message to Niran telling him he would lose Jira privileges if he opened it again.

 Wow.

 Hey, Rodvik, remember again how you asked why SL had so much trouble retaining users?

This should be a pretty strong clue for you. It's not specifically due to this single isolated issue of asymmetrical attachments, this is just a symptom of the overarching problem here. A problem that has repeated itself across the Jira time and time again.

 Our inability to make avatar arms long enough was reported, patches provided, only for the Lindens to close them with either no explanation, or with an explanation which did nothing but reveal that the person making the decision was not qualified to do so.

 How about our inability to increase female torso muscle sliders past 50? That was reported in a Jira the moment the bug crept into the viewer, several years ago. It was also handwaved away despite the fact that community devs took the time to report the issue and provide fixes.

 In fact, pretty much every single aspect of SL content creation is broken in some way, often multiple ways, and when the problems are reported, the response is almost always identical to this case here.

 All of this contributes, greatly, to how ugly SL is compared to contemporary expectations of 3D game-like environments. Contributes to how kludgy and difficult content creation within SL is. All of these problems compound on one another to negatively affect the performance, visual quality and ease of use new users experience when they log into SL for that all important first impression.

 And that right there is a large part (not the only part, but a large one) of why SL has so much difficulty retaining users.

Nothing works, it looks awful, and it runs like crap. And LL refuses to fix the underlying causes for that.

The Tallest Avatar Shape

I've often cited 8'10"/270cm as the tallest SL avatars can be.

That is the male mesh wearing a shoe clothing layer for the additional height that provides.

However, I was recently taking a closer look at that in an attempt to create an as proportionate as possible giant avatar. Using more accurate prim measurements, rather than the scripted rulers I usually use for cursory looks, I found the maximum height of the SL avatar is actually 8'8"/263cm.

Without the shoe layer height, the male avatar mesh maxes out at 8'3"/251cm.

As for how successful I was in creating a proportionate giant?

Avatars this size are more common than male avatars shorter than the yellow NBA figure in the middle.

The male avatar is far better for this than the female, as, without the shoe layer height, he can at least have his arms proportionately long when maxed out. Unfortunately this means you cannot make the arms longer than would be proportionate for an adult human of normal stature, most giants are depicted as either being gangly or having emphasized upper bodies, both of which require longer than average arms to achieve.

The avatar also had a short torso, even maxed out at 100 the torso was nearly half a foot too short for his body. This wouldn't have been so bad if the arms could be equally long respective to the legs to achieve that lanky, gangly look, like the giants of Skyrim.

Another odd thing, but maxing out the head size does allow for the giant to be almost exactly 8 heads tall, so there's really no excuse for all the pin-headed avatars.

 Still, it's not something I'd feel comfortable slapping the "Vitruvian Shapes" moniker on and it really highlights the limitations of the appearance editor that while you can make a shape over eight and a half feet tall, you can't give it the proportions of a figure that tall.

Doin' It 4 Da Shorteez

Inspired by the screenshot I took for the dwarf shape inclusions in the Vitruvian Shapes set, I decided to take the idea a bit further to see if I could better illustrate one of the points I'm often trying to make about scale.

 The largest avatar here is the minotaur. He's hunched over and pushed to the background of this group shot,  but he towers over the others at 8'8"/263cm when standing up straight. Mythological minotaurs are usually depicted as being anywhere from 6' to 9' tall. This is similar to the range in Tauren heights in World of Warcraft.

What's remarkable about that is that the SL avatar mesh maxes out at the same exact height, and a lot of male avatars in SL do exactly that! So the hulking giant in this screenshot is only the size of the tallest "normal" human avatars in SL. With the average human male avatar in SL being anywhere from 7'1"/216cm to about 8'/244cm, the minotaur isn't very imposing at all when tossed out into the grid at large.

 To take that comparison further, the human woman on the right is only 5'7"/170cm (although her high heeled boots push her up to 5'11"/182cm which is taller than the average North American man, unless he is also wearing 4" heels) and would be considered a dwarf compared to the 6'4"/193cm female starter avatars LL provides to new users.

 This means that, just using the base avatar mesh and no tricks, we could create an almost 9' tall giant which would stand eye to eye with the minotaur pictured here. Giants in mythology are generally depicted between 7' and 11' tall. The giants in Skyrim are also "only" 11-12' tall.

Average heights from life and popular culture.
The minotaur avatar was shrunk to average WoW Tauren size but also isn't crouching.
The NBA basketball player here is about the same size as the female starters in SL.
The male starters would look down on him at about 216cm.

 Enabling people to create intentional giants is not a new argument from me, so then what exactly is the point I'm trying to drive home, here?

 Well, the most often cited counter argument I hear is that the flip side of making human avatars human sizes is that we'd eliminate the ability for people to create intentionally shorter avatars, like, for example, dwarves and goblins.

 To that I say that the dwarf and goblin avatars in the first screenshot of this post clock in at 5'/152cm and 4'9"/145cm, respectively. The female dwarf shape I also include in my free shape set is also 4'9" and neither is the shortest I could have made them.

 It is difficult to maintain adult human proportions under 4'11"/150cm, certainly, but when you aim for dwarf and child proportions it becomes much easier. In reality this is true as well, as a 5' tall adult has notably different proportions than a 6' or 7' tall adult.

Vitruvian Shapes Update!

I've updated the full perm package set of Vitruvian Shapes to include brand new fantasy dwarf shapes in the Tolkein or RPG mold.

The dwarves are 4'9" for the female shape and 5' even for the male shape.

SL has a lot of giants, but not very many dwarves to be seen.

My usual bovine self is 5'10", the dwarf is 5' even.

 Also included are shapes I made to improve the SL starter avatars. One for the Commando, and another for the Gladiator. There are only male versions of these at present but I will be adding more shapes over time.

You can get the whole set over on the SL Marketplace HERE.