I've always thought Vicky 2's legs looked too stubby and now I think I have proof.

I was doing some reading the other day about the mathematical value PHI (a.k.a. the "divine proportion", which has a value about 1.618) which occurs throughout nature. A prime example is that the quotient of adjacent values in a fibonacci sequence moves toward PHI:

1
1 1.000
2 2.000
3 1.500
5 1.667
8 1.600
13 1.625
21 1.615
34 1.619
55 1.618
89 1.618
144 1.618
233 1.618
377 1.618
and so on

Another supposed manifestation of the divine proportion is that the ratio of a person's height to the distance from their navel to the floor usually equals PHI.

So I used lesbentley's calipers to measure this ratio for Vicky 2, and as I suspected she comes up short (her out-of-the-box ratio is 1.636, even after zeroing her body part bends). Vicky 2's ratio would be 1.619 if her shins were y-scaled to 105%.

I haven't tried this for V3 or any of the other figures, nor have I checked other proportions on the human body which are supposed to have a ratio equal to PHI (e.g., I believe there's one for fingertips to shoulder divided by fingertips to elbow), but I'm wondering if DAZ might not want to consider making their millenium figures more "divine."

Just checked V3 and her head height to navel height ratio is even worse than V2's: 1.651 out of the box.

You would have to y-scale her shins to 107% to get close to the divine proportion (outcome = 1.619).

No WONDER I can't bear to use V3 anymore... well, actually it was V3's hip and knee deformation which drove me away. But the divine proportion thing just reinforces my view that I should be able to lengthen the y-scale on her shins without suffering an unacceptable distortion at the top of her calf when her knee is bent (and I could never fix it playing with either the stretchlegs morph or her knee's the joint control parameters). Alas.

And you know what... WHO CARES. Please take a look outside your window and notice that most people do not fit this so called "divine proportion" rule. If you look into this rule, they took specific ethnicities and fudged the inforamtion to fit an ideal. That is NOT how the real world is. If you are in America, most people are a bit stockier and, over the last 30 years, a lot more heavyset. Eastern Europe - stockier, shorter legs. Aboriginals - smaller legs. Hispanics - shorter/stockier. I'm sorry, you want "perfection", you want consistency, go play with your Barbies (tm).

Actually a lot of people do fit the golden ratio. Its not a rule but almost all human related construction usually fits this value ie door width to height ratios etc. There are exceptions but the ratio appears to be the norm. And I agree with the poster that Vicky 2's legs are just plain too short in an unnatural way. I actually think her arms are a bit long as well. Both can be fixed with the leg and arm scales but the problem is all the clothes are made for her in non-scale form. Most won't scale correctly when the leg scale is used. Tguyus. There is a patch that fixes V3 so you can scale her legs without the knees buckling.

This natural human scale was noticed by the Egyptians, Greeks and Roman artists. The proportions of Classic artistic beauty haven't changed very much over the centuries. Nobody said all humans are classically beautiful.

ryamka - What on EARTH does Barbie have to do with perfection?? lol! I never saw more ridiculous proportions.... The really big problem with the Milfigures proportionally speaking is their tiny heads. That's a lot worse than the other stuff. Mason! Where's that patch?! It can't be part of the SR's for V3, I have those of course. :] Fish

The part I find disturbing about biometrics is that in the 19th century they used skull measurements to typecast people into brachycephalic and dolichocephalic groups. This was used, along with phrenology, to classify groups as either inferior or prone to criminal behavior, and it led the way as part of the justification for the idiotic Aryan fallacies that eventually destroyed much of Europe.

There is a lot written about the so-called "divine" or "golden" ratio, especially how it relates to aesthetics in humans. Keeping the subject specific to proportions of anatomy (and not to other aesthetic or geometical observations), all of the conversations regarding this are strictly aesthetic. Look up real research where they have performed measurements on human populations and compared the results to the "golden" ratio, and guess what, it fails, big time! Now, I will not dispute that to me, the ratio does produce a pleasing proportion, but it does not reflect reality. It was an aesthetic choice that has been perpetuated by artists and so-called literates (romantics) who keep perpetuating the incorrect "fact" that the average human matches the ratio. Reality does not confirm this by any stretch. So, I am not arguing that the ratio is not useful or that there is anything inherently wrong with it (strictly referring to using it as a measure of anatomical proportions), but saying that it is the human norm and that Vicky is flawed because she does not match it is strictly silly. - Ray

...Well, crap, I guess Ill have to go and model, rig, morph, uv map, texture, group and all that other fun stuff and make my own Vicky since DAZ cant seem to get it right...oh wait, I have no idea how to do that... ...Im very happy with what I have... :) E

I like long legs, so I scaled the upper body of my Vickies down. Scaling down the upper body circumvents problems with fitting leg/footware. I see real people all day long (including myself and my wife). Time for some "unreal" people.

Well, Ryamka... I tried looking out the window at people, but I just couldn't quite gauge their head to floor : navel to floor ratio by sight, especially since the vast majority of them were clothed. So I grabbed a tape measure and ran outside to ask people if they would lift their shirts so I could measure their navel height, but no one would let me.

Anyway, looks like I inadvertently hit some raw nerves (among the low-slung navel set at least), and for that I apologize. Heck, I've never measured my own navel height so I might have even insulted myself! But this was supposed to be about a couple of computer graphics characters, and my view that they should have and could have been built so we weren't stuck with (IMHO) unaesthetic proportions which can't be adjusted without distorting the mesh during animations.

Although Ryamka may want to create "realistically" heavyset, stubby-legged, aboriginal, hispanic eastern europeans who are not named Barbie (tm), that's not what I want. And a computer model lacking the flexibility to adjust mesh element proportions is, IMO, flawed. So go ahead and call me "strictly silly", especially since I don't know what it means to be strict about silliness, so I'm not offended anyway.

But I do think mateo_sancarlos may be onto something. Maybe Vicky's failure to conform to the divine ratio explains her tendency toward criminal behavior, at least in terms of her predilection toward threatening people in temples with sharp weapons.

All kidding aside, thanks to Mason for the suggestion re the V3 patch. I picked up the SR1 patch long ago and that didn't seem to help. But I'll check to see if there's a more recent patch which could help with this problem.
[TGuyus returns to his work, wondering how many people are standing up and reaching for a tape measure...]

Do I have to get out of my chair before measuring navel to ground distance? If so, its not natural.

I have been reading this thread with interest. I think there is confusion over the Divine or Golden ratio and how it relates to human proportions. The golden ratio doesn't apply to all humans, however it has been found that this ratio does apply to cultural definitions of beauty. In other words, a face and/or body that fits the golden ratio will have an almost universal appeal. Whereas a face/body that does not fit the ratio will have less appeal based upon its divergence from the ratio, the farther away from the ratio, the less attactive. For an example of this, check out the Marquart mask. It is a mask that is built upon the golden ratio. By placing it over a photo of an individual, it provides a visual reference defining how close that individual fits the golden ratio and hence how beautiful they are. If V2 and V3 don't fit the golden ratio perfectly, it doesn't mean they aren't appealing, it simply means their appeal will not be as culturally universal as a model that does fit the ratio. I have attatched a file that contains the "mask" if it interests you. Sorry I don't have a link for you, but try a search under Marquart, he is a cosmetic surgeon from California USA if that helps.

Here is the lateral view of the Marquart mask. If you think your attractive you might have the courage to try it on a photo of yourself. :0

A Californian cosmetic surgeon - hmmm.

If you really want divine proportions, eat a lot of angel food cake. Seriously, my brother and sister constantly harp on the errors in proportional size of V's hands. And then there's... Judy!