Ms. Robbiani's Inventory

Skin~ Pink Fuel – Skye
Eyes~ Poetic Colors- Evening Sky
Hair~ Tiny Bird – Kissy Kissy
Standing Pose~ Curio Obscura- Hobble Stand 3

I want to help others make their own personalized avatar shape. I do not want every female avatar to look the same. However, I know how difficult it was to make the first shape I really liked and I want to give help to those who want it. This tutorial shows how to make a specific shape, with all the slider values and a few tips along the way. Please note that the suggested slider values are specific to the shape I create in this tutorial. I encourage everyone to experiment with the sliders to make their shape unique. I would appreciate any feed back and I would love to know if this was helpful to you at all.

1. Prepare

A.Wear your preferred skin and eyes. You can wear hair as long as it doesn’t cover a lot of your face. Don’t wear anything else. Sit your avatar on a pose stand if you have one (lots of stores give away free pose stands).

B.Your sky setting should have ample ambient light and enough gamma to eliminate all the shadows on your avatar. See Gogo’s tutorial on how she creates this effect.

C. Open you inventory window. Select New Body Parts > New Shape from the Create menu of the inventory window. A new shape called, conveniently, New Shape, will appear in your inventory. **Rename the new shape something memorable! You might lose it if you don’t.**

D. Wear the new shape by double clicking it in your inventory or dragging and dropping it onto your avatar. This is the default female shape which you probably won’t like. But it’s free, full perm, and you created it. Technically, you could just stop here and use this shape the rest of your virtual life. But you probably want something different.

E. To change your new shape, go into Appearance Mode either by selecting Appearance in the Edit menu at the top of your screen or by right-clicking your avatar and selecting Appearance from the pie menu which pops up.

2. Changing the Face

A. Eyes
The eyes are one of the most important features on your avatar and help to create your desired persona. Eyes can be larger to make your avatar look younger or narrowed to give your avatar a smoldering glare. I personally prefer evenly-spaced, almond-shaped eyes.

Here are my suggested slider values for pretty-pretty eyes:
Eye Size: 45
Eye Opening: 35
Eye Spacing: 49
Outer Eye Corner: 50
Inner Eye Corner: 19
Eye Depth: 39
Upper Eye Fold: 0
Eye Bags: 0
Puffy Eyelids: 0
Eyelash Length: 0
Eye Pop: 50

B. Mouth

The mouth is one of the easiest body parts to customize. You can have thin lips or full lips. You can have a cupid’s bow or a pout. I personally like full, balanced lips with a moderately defined top lip cleft.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty mouth:
Lip Width: 30
Lip Fullness: 41
Lip Thickness: 38
Lip Ratio: 47
Mouth Position: 52
Mouth Corner: 50
Lip Cleft Depth: 26
Lip Cleft: 49
Shift Mouth: 50

**You will need to modify your shape to fit your skin, so if these settings don’t look pretty with your skin it is because the skin designer drew the mouth a certain way that requires different settings. Specifically, different lip fullness or lip width.**

C. Nose

The avatar nose is challenging to modify for several reasons. Make sure you get a sideways view plus a front view of the nose as you edit it because some changes might not be visible from all angles. Increasing nose size stretches the nose away from your face as if it was made of rubber. It does not stretch it vertically like you might expect it to. Any nose width less than 50 creates a noticeable crease on the outer corner of each nostril which will become more noticeable with harsh shadows. I suggest making the nose width smaller than 50 anyway, because otherwise it looks out of proportion with the rest of the face.  I don’t change the default nose too much except to make it less upturned.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty nose:
Nose Size: 12
Nose Width: 36
Nostril Division: 52
Nose thickness: 25
Upper Bridge: 43
Lower Bridge: 50
Bridge Width: 60
Nose Tip Angle: 36
Nose Tip Shape: 0
Crooked Nose: 50

**The nose is always changing with each different skin you wear. Make sure you try a demo of each skin before you buy it and check if you can to tweak the nose to make the skin look nice on your shape.**
**The shape of your avatar’s nose is also affected by head shape, so keep this in mind when you modify the avatar’s head.**

D. Chin

Your avatar’s chin gives a lot of clues about your avatar’s apparent weight and age. A young and slender person generally has a high chin, no jowls and almost no double chin. This shape will have a young person’s chin, but the face will keep its fullness by making the jaw more square than pointy.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty chin:
Chin Angle: 50
Jaw Shape: 65
Chin Depth: 42
Jaw Angle: 49
Jaw Jut: 53
Jowls: 0
Chin Cleft: 9
Upper Chin Cleft: 0
Chin-Neck: 20

E. Ears

Ears are often covered by hair and don’t get much thought. Detach your avatar’s hair for this stage if it covers the ears completely. I suggest you try to make the ears about the same length as your avatar’s nose and leave the earlobes mostly unattached. If a prim hair sticks into your avatar’s ears unattractively then you can choose to edit the ears before you edit the hair. If you want pointy elf ears, it’s generally better to buy tinted prim ears than to stretch the skin so extremely.

Here are my suggested slider values for pretty-pretty ears:
Ear Size: 28
Ear Angle:17
Unattached Earlobes: 32
Ear Tips: 20

3. Changing the Head

Be careful with changing the head! This can affect the appearance of your avatar’s face and greatly affects how well prim hairs will fit on your avatar (I would switch between different hairs and go bald occasionally for this stage). Also, make sure the head doesn’t look to big or too small for your avatar’s body. You will have to look at your avatar critically from all angles and judge for yourself if the head looks out of place. If you edit the head before changing the body, you might have to come back to this section to fit the head to the body.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty head:
Head Size: 50
Head Stretch: 33
Head Shape: 50
Egg Head: 66
Head Length: 55
Face Shear: 50
Forehead Angle: 33
Brow Size: 30
Upper Cheeks: 30
Lower Cheeks: 24
Cheek Bones: 28

4. Changing the Torso

I don’t like the default shape’s wide shoulders in relation to the hips, which gives the female avatar a manly silhouette. Breast size generally shouldn’t go any higher than 72 or else your avatar’s breasts will have jagged polygonal edges. A breast gravity of zero will be comical on most avatars because many skins already give avatar breasts a buoyant appearance. To check arm length, go out of appearance mode and let the arms hang down (either with an animation or a default stand). If your avatar’s wrists rest much higher up than her bikini area then the arms are too short! You will have to check the arm length again every time you change the torso length and body height, since these affect the position of your avatar’s hips in relation to the rest of her body.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty torso:
Torso Muscles: 40
Neck Thickness: 40
Neck Length: 43
Shoulders: 31
Breast Size: 61
Breast Buoyancy: 37
Breast Cleavage: 48
Arm Length: 60
Hand Size: 31
Torso Length: 50
Love Handles: 33
Belly Size: 0

** I like avatar shapes that have belly sizes greater than zero, but even a small belly can cause some poses to not fit the avatar. Since I am making a pretty-pretty shape and not a cool, unique shape I will just keep it at the default, which is zero.**

5. Changing the Legs (Lower Body)

Before you do anything else, make the feet size zero. Almost every prim shoe for sale today is made to fit a size zero foot (though some shoes are resize, size zero is always the default). To check if the lower body is in proportion with the rest of the body, go in and out of appearance mode to see your avatar from every possible angle. I like the muscularity and length of the legs to look similar to the length and muscularity of the upper body. I prefer the hip width to look similar to or a little wider than the shoulder width.  Although having saddle bags may sound unattractive, this slider is what gives the hips and thighs a natural curve without shoving the legs apart or adding bulky muscle.

Here are my suggested slider values for pretty-pretty legs:
Leg Muscles: 44
Leg Length: 47
Hip Width: 53
Hip Length: 45
Butt Size: 32
Saddle Bags: 28
Knee Angle: 50
Foot Size: 0

6. Changing the Body

These are all the default shape’s settings, so don’t complain to me about them. I think there is no right or wrong height, body thickness, or body fat value. However, you might want to adjust other body parts after changing your body settings. For example, you might want to shorten the legs after making your avatar taller because increasing height also lengthens the legs.

Here are my suggested slider values for a pretty-pretty body:
Height: 53
Body Thickness: 32
Body Fat: 0

That’s it! If you liked this tutorial then all I ask is that you pass it on to someone else.  I hope you have fun making your own shapes in the future.