It never ceases to amaze me how many people spend countless hours searching for even more improved ways to render the human form, while the most basic thing to achive realism is commonly overlooked:

SHAPE.

As someone who did scale modelling for 35+ years, unrealistc "eyeballed" models really make me sick, especially when they are done by people who DO have the technical skills to make an excellent model, but couldn´t be bothered searching for some correct blueprints.

While it´s true that only nerds (like me. LOL) might spot a wrong shape in a "Spitfire" plane, wrong shapes in more common things will be spotted by a lot more people.

And then it´s about something as common as the human body, everyone of us is an expert who easily can spot if something is "wrong".

At least one should think so.

While of course everyone is build different, there are rules about human proportion which apply to the "average" human beeing, and can be used as a blueprint just like one uses a blueprint or photographs when you model other things.

So let´s load Andrew Loomis human proportions chart into Poser and lets see how our favorite girl measures up against it:

The size of the human skull doesn´t vary much among adults, so we have to scale the chart untill the head size matches that of Vicky 3.

Compared to Loomis 5'7" "Ideal" woman, V3 turns out to be an awe inspiring 6'3" Amazon. (Or is that "Mammazon" ?)  ;-)

Ouch. Not even Supermodels are that tall.

So lets scale her down to make her more, well, not "average", because the average US woman is even shorter than Loomis "ideal", but at least more "human":

Body : scale    88%
Head: scale   102%
Stretch Arms:  0,5
FootPetite:       -1
Hands: scale 105% 

A lot better, don´t you think ?

Playing around with V3´s standard bodymorps, we can get even closer to Loomis "ideal" shape:

For those interrested, the texture used is Jochen38´s free Elizabeth texture. Most likely the nicest FREE V3 texture I´ve ever seen.
Head morph is my own. The bodymorphs, apart from a single magnet used to compensate for the neck deformation caused by the head scaling, are standard V3.

Now lets turn to the second favorite realistic model out there: Miki.

Miki´s body was patterened after Czech model Anetta Keys, so we know she is 5'5" tall:

That´s actually bit too tall for an average Japanese woman which are more like 5'0" to 5'2" , so I scaled her down by shortening the thighs, shins and the abdomen along the y-axis.
She´s now 5'3".
I actually would modify her body even a bit more to emphasize that she´s Japanese, but even right out of the box she has pretty realistic proportions.

Next to her is my "Euro-Miki", a V3-Miki hybrid that shows MIKI´s original body at 5'5" height.

Conclusion:

Right out of the box, V3 is pretty useless when you want render a realistically proportioned female.
(And so are all the other DAZ meshes)

At the very least scale her head to 112%, make her arms a bit longer and scale up hands and feet to match the head.
(And modify your other figures in a similar fashion.)

MIKI has a lot of other problems, but at least her shape is pretty realistic (for an average European woman).

And OF COURSE you can go on and use V3 and the other DAZ folks just as they are, because there is that thing called artistic freedom, so you decide what you like.

All I´m saying that if you want to claim "realism" for your work, first make sure that the models themselves are actually realistic.

Stahlratte

stahlratte - interesting reading. 
I do agree that if you were going for total realism then these facts should be taken into consideration. When I design my characters I do try for as realisticly proportionate figures as possible but in reality, there are many people whos proportions are very different to others & also how many people would notice if the body shape was slightly off? I do think it's worth trying to achieve though.

"Miki´s body was patterened after Czech model Anetta Keys" - I never knew this! I must admit that from what I can think of Miki & Anetta, I can't really see it. Maybe I'll have to do a comparison.

Yeah, Very interesting read.
Some of us over the years also have tried to achieve that realistic proportioned form (the beauty of th form idea).
But the policies of this site stoped THAT dead in it's tracks.
The figure you created useing the Elizabeth texture is great. But the MODS would ban it as looking to young!!! She looks to be 16 to 23, a bannable character.

So we're stuck with massive boobed, fat ass'd amazons less we get a warning.
The flesh is willing but the rules are weak.

I just downloaded this page, and saved it as a PDF file before the MODs can get their righteous little fingers on it.  Ha-ha.  It's nice to see that my antiphathy to V3 is based on more than just an anti-Daz instinct.
Since I don't use Vickies at all (except to dipict them as Hermaphrodite males, or using a dwarf morph, as dumpy little females), I'd be interested as to how well Posette, Judy (and Neja since I finally got P5 with the big CP giveaway), and Natalia measure up on the same scale.
I'm especially in hearing about Neja, since I have several hundred Posette head morphs I can use on her, and Judy is face room compatable.  Is she more reasonably proportione as compared to V3?  (I think she is, but I'd still like to have my prejudices confirmed by an expert).
David P. Hoadley

Very interesting - I always knew they were too tall - but you've explained it so well. Thank you for sharing the information.

6' 3"!!!! Damn V3 is a frick'in tight end! No wonder so many artists render her as Naked Vicky in a temple with a sword. This was a very interesting thread.

Sealtm2 - "Damn V3 is a frick'in tight end!" - It's a good job I know about US football or that comment would have sounded even funnier!!

Quote - Sealtm2 - "Damn V3 is a frick'in tight end!" - It's a good job I know about US football or that comment would have sounded even funnier!!

LOL! Okay how about this then...ehem.....Damn V3 is a frick'in second row!

I would like to see you try and tell Lucy Lawless (Xena) that she is proportionally incorrect..!

Many thanks for the kind words so far.

Ok, here come Posette (Nea) and Jena.
Judy and Jena have the same body, so I didn´t include her in the test.

Scaled so that their head sizes match that of Loomis chart, Posette turns out to be 5'8" while Jena is 5'10".
Not perfect , but a lot better than V3.

Jena inherited a bit of "pinheadedness" from Judy, who inherited it from V2 which she was meant to compete with.

Here are both slightly modified:

Posette/NEA´s head was left as is, but I shortened her thighs and shins a bit. I lenghtened the abdomen, and made her arms longer. Nothing drastic, but enough to make her look a bit less "heroic".

Jena got her head scaled up to 102%, and also her thighs and shins shortened. I also added two magnets to lift her sagging shoulders a bit.) Her arms were lenghtend a bit, too.
I scaled the body down a bit so that her head again matches those of the chart and Posette/Nea.

@Ziggie: Lucy Lawless is 5'11", so even she would be dwarfed by a real world V3.

I´m not saying that V3 is "incorrect".
She is correctly proportioned  for a 6'3" tall woman.

But if you want to portray an "ideal" or even an average woman, then you cannot use her "as is".

Stahlratte

Quote - 6' 3"!!!! Damn V3 is a frick'in tight end! No wonder so many artists render her as Naked Vicky in a temple with a sword. This was a very interesting thread.

More like a Linebacker, if you ask me!  (Which, of course, you didn't.) ;=]
DPH

maybe she's NBA material (now there would be something interesting.;)

Wow, Stahlratte that's great info.  I've been wanting to do that comparison for a long time as I've always felt something was a bit off with the V3 proportions.

Maybe this explains why I always want to put V3 in some scene kicking butt.  6'3...

Oh, btw, I'm flagging this for Nudity, I'me sitting at work and didn't know.  Almost an oops!

Thanks again for the valuable info!

@ ThrommArcadia: Opps, sorry !  Honest mistake !

My only excuse is that Rendo is slow as molasses for me today, and I made  about a dozend edits before I was happy with the original post so I simply forgot the nudity flag over all the wating for the side to load between previews.  :-(

Stahlratte.

Ahh, this thread explains a lot . For years I 'm trying to make some decent furniture based on the size of the poser units which is given in the manual: 1 poser unit is 8,6 feet or 262,128 cm. Allways when tried to make victoria sit on  one of my chairs, it appears to small and  I had to resize it. As an interior designer/engineer, I'm always trying to make my furniture as ergonomic as possible, which isn't easy, but when DAZ makes there models above the 95% standard ratio, you're running a lost race. I knew there was something wrong, but I never had the time to figure it out. But what to do now?  What  scale does DAZ use? And what was their intention? Or didn't they to do it on purpose which I wonder.I've attached a picture with jessi and vicki with the meter-stick of dr.Geep.

stahlratte, could you be more specific (and possibly post a photo) on how you used magnets to fix jena's and Judy's shoulders?  Also a list of your specific changes to the arms, abdomen, thighs and shins would be appreciated.
Yours truly,
David P. Hoadley

Could you do one with Stephanie 3 and Aiko 3? I realy would like to know how they would compare as well. Great work on these comparisons!
:biggrin:

I'm sorry, I've made some mistake in the last render, so I attach a new picture with also a feet scale for imperial people among us. What do you notice? Victoria (3.0 sae) is much too big, but Jessi isn't small either, I've too admit she is more in limits than VIcki, but her body-proportions are much more similar to someone of a smaller size. I think that mr. Hoadley has a point when he says that posette or judy are more realistic than V3 or even like Jessi. What Vicky lacks is exaggerated at Jessi: the female proportion. Jessi looks like a comicbook Superhero, I 'm sure  that you can find a women with same proportions as Vicky, but sexy isn't the word that comes to my mind. Lucky enough, Daz comes with a huge set of morphs to make her look more feminime. I suspect that they make her look that way, so you had to buy the extra body and face morphs. When you're making clothes for Vicky, you won't notice the big size of vicky: You use her body object as a reference and make her clothes fit her body. As a furniture or prop-modeller it is something different: To make a realistic object, you have to know exactly which scale Poser use, so you can make your object not too big or too small. If some company just fools around with it, I don't have much appreciation for that.

Attached Link: Shoulder and neck magnets

Here are the values used for Posette/NEA and Judy/Neja:

NEJA /Judy

Head        scale  105%
Shoulder x-scale 105%
ForeArm x-scale 105%
Shin       y-scale 95%

Posette/NEA
Shoulder  x-scale 105%
ForeArm  x-scale 105%
Abdomen y-scale 108%
Shin        y-scale 95%
Thigh       y-scale 95%

The most important thing is that all adult meshes have (more or less) the same head size, like in real life, so I would leave the body scale of your most frequently used mesh at 100%, and scale all other meshes to match.
(After you corrected their head to body proportions.)

I made a download for both Judy/NeJa´s shoulder as well as the neck magnet one needs when V3´s head is scaled up.
See attached link.

@mylemonblue: I can do Sp3, but Aiko 3 would be pointless, as she isn´t intended to be a realistic human, so their head/body ratio is way off by default.  ;-)

Stahlratte

Without a standard reference, it's easy to fall into the trap of saying, "Jeez, V3's head sure is small for her size."

**NOW WE KNOW THE TRUTH!

**It's not small--SHE'S HUGE!

@___@ Wow.  Doing a comparative size examination of popular poser models is Superlative!

Sort of a Jane's Book of VR Models. :lol:

Since Poser Normal Units are crap to use, I've been using the Poser yard-stick that was come up with, like others in this thread.  I think there in lays the gordian knot of outlandish size.  If you don't KNOW how big something is, you can't really know how big or small something is.

Stahl----You are my hero.  This one article had turned my perception of Poser upside down.  That is NOT a bad thing, either.  I fully support this thread as a VERY important reference not just on human proportions, but how to achieve them in Poser and other CGI apps!

You deserve a prize or something for this!

More to do, of course.  Like Terai Yuki, Aiko, S3 and others.

Brilliant.  Bloody brilliant!

EDIT: Aiko is useable when REALISITC morph is used.  The only way I use her. ^__^ V,,

Ok, her come Jessi and SP3:

Out of the box and adjusted to match the Loomis head size, Jessi is a massive 6'0", while Stephanie is a "not really petite" 5'8".

Lets see what we can do with them:

I scaled Jessis legs A LOT shorter, as well as her neck.
Made her arms longer and her head larger. She ALMOST looks human now, but her strange knees and shins, as well as her hands still give her away as an evil alien Fembot (From outer space)  ;-P

SP3 is pretty all around perfect, especially her legs.
But I don´t like her overly thin neck so I still scaled the head up a weee bit and made the neck wider along the x-axis.
I´m also not that fond of her squarish hip shape, but all in all she has the best out of the box shape foor a TALL (!) young athlethic woman, while Miki represents the best "average" body type.

Posette/NEA and Judy/NeJa hold up pretty well, and with a bit of scaling and better shoulders NeJa looks pretty good.
IMO her shins need some work just like Jessi´s, but her knees are a lot better.

Jessi and V3 sure are the most problematic. Only a major overhaul or some loose fitting clothes can save Jessi.
(But to be fair, she by far has the best shoulders and I like her face)
V3 can be morphed pretty easily, but SP3 can do everything V3 can and has the more realistic bodyshape out of the box. She also bends much better.

Stahlratte

Most people do not have the proportions of that loomis ideal proportion chart, it looks a lot like the greek ideal proportions, you would have to be at least 7 feet tall to have similar proportions.

No one at 5 foot 7 has the proportions of the picture.

Are you referring to bodyshape or headsize to bodyheight ratio ?

Loomis sure has shown an "ideal" bodyshape (Wide shoulders- small hips), but the headsize to body height ratio is correct.
And that´s why he called it "Ideal proprtions".
As I said the "average" women is shorter and stockier, and has a lower head to body ratio. (6 1/2 to 7 1/2 heads high instead of eight)

But even if we say that the headsize to bodyheight ratio is set too low by Loomis, V3 would then be even more taller than she already is.

But I´m always eager to learn more, so please feel free to backup your opinion with a different chart.

Stahlratte

The head size to body ratio is not correct, the picture shows a much more accurate set of measurements, the greeks used the eight head height proportions because they are supposed to look better and a lot of modern artists do it as well but it is not accurate.

This is not just something that I just read in a book, I have learned it through observation, the polycletus picture is actually still not totally accurate but it is closer than the eight head height idea.

What would need to be done, in your opinoion, to improve the shape of Judy's/Neja's shins?
DPH

You know Stahlratte, you ought to package some of your results and put them on the market.

Venus-figure about 25000, years old, found in WIlendorf, Austria.

pjz99 wrote: *You know Stahlratte, you ought to package some of your results and put them on the market.

*Before you do that you have to consider the following:
I didn't knew Andrew Loomis (shame on me, but I'm European) so I did some googling: Andrew Loomis was famous for his art books (and illustrations) which he published in the years 40 and 50. His proportion scales of the ideal female were based on the average dimensions and the ideal beauty image of that time (and that part of the world) SInce then the average western women and men have grown 3-4" (really!) and it is still going on. For my work I use ergonomic data which are about 25 years old and they are starting to be a little useless. That is one.
Ergonomics are based on the average measurement of people.  You use a scale based on a gaussian deviation. If a person lenght is below the 5% of that scale he is considered too small, and if he's above the 95% of that scale he is too tall. So if he's between the 5 and the 95% he's "normal". The difference in length between the top and the bottom of the scale is about 8 inch which is rather a lot. That is two.
"Ideal" proportions change with the time. The image of how a beautiful woman or man should look like is dictated by glamour magazines, fashiondesigners, Film and TV -makers etc. You only have to look at pictures of the various decades: women of the 20's would be considered plumb nowadays. These images of idealistic shapes are translated in the proportions of the most appealing bodyparts.That's three.
So my point is: there's is no ideal, eternal, universal woman. It changes with time,place and culture.

But even with a average growth in length of 4" and a standard deviation of 4", I still consider Vicky too tall.

But still when all is said and done, very few MEN are 6' 3", let alone women; which only goes to prove what I've said already in more than one thread: V3is the best MAN that DAZ has produce so far!

^^ bigger pecs plz

Quote - The image of how a beautiful woman or man should look like is dictated by glamour magazines, fashion designers, Film and TV -makers etc. You only have to look at pictures of the various decades: women of the 20's would be considered plumb nowadays. These images of idealistic shapes are translated in the proportions of the most appealing bodyparts

I agree, basically there is no 'average' human body shape or type. Whatever you like using in your work or whatever a client asks for is whats 'average'. eg if i used the 'corrected' figs posted here, most of my clients would reject them on the basis that they look like teenagers...

Also note that we aren't drawing or sketching here, but shooting from a (virtual) camera. Which means you also have to take into account the fact that depending on the lens, perspective distortion changes the look of the body shape dramatically. You can make default vicky look like a midget with a  small enough Focal. Its the same idea as that of a real photograph adding or taking away pounds on a person. This is why modelers try to aim for a middle of the road shape that will be usable across a reasonable amount of lenses and not look too horrible in any single one.

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/9336/camsav1.jpg

Or in other words rather then an ortho drawing, a much better guide is to use photographs of real people for reference and use your own judgment as to what looks best in a particular scene.

Here´s what I´d do with Judy/NeJas legs. Six magnets per leg toned them down a bit.

@Xantor and bopperthijs:

Yes, I agree that an "average" person is more like 7 to 7 1/2 heads height.
(look at Miki in my chart. She´s just 7 1/2 heads high)

If you think that an 5'8" woman should be 7 1/2 instead of 8 heads high, simply add 4" to the height I´ve given, thus making V3 6'7" instead of 6'3".

If you rather think 5'8" in real live is 7 heads high, then just add 8" to the heights I´ve  given, so unmodified V3 would be even 6'11" in "real life".

The body to head ratios are still perfectly valid, regardless what real world size you connect with a certain head to body ratio.. Just change the real life height numbers.

But, Loomis "8 heads is ideal" ratio is still pretty much valid and universally reckognized.
In fact, as the average height has indeed shifted upwards, an 8 head high person has become even a bit "more average" and less "ideal".

Stahlratte

"Or in other words rather then an ortho drawing, a much better guide is to use photographs of real people for reference and use your own judgment as to what looks best in a particular scene."

Sorry, but that statement is nonsense.
Yes, sounds harsh, sorry, but I´m soo fed up with these cop outs to justify that "everthing goes".
As a scalemodeller I have to be accurate to a fraction of an inch.
A model is either accurate or not.
If it´s off, I failed.

And while people are BUILD differently (Fat, thin, muscular), their PROPORTIONS are either accurate or not, too.

What a client thinks what "looks" like a teenager or not is totally irrelevant.
The only thing important is what a REAL teenager looks like.

And if you want to portray a realistic teenager, then do your homework while you create a model of one, and not just "follow your gut".

If you want to portray reality, then you must first create a realistic model of the real world. It´s that simple.

Yes, different camera settings will deliver different results, and guess what, the same happens in real live.

A 6' 3" Vicky monster doesn´t become "average" when you use the wrong camera settings.

Your camera settings might distort V3 so much that she appears to be more normal, but everything else in your picture will be then distorted, too.

If you WANT to picture a 6'3" tall Amazon, no problem with using Vicky as is.
But if you can´t be bothered creating correct replicas of reality first, don´t pretend that your renders are "realistic" in any shape or form.

You have the artistic freedom to do what you want in your renders, so feel free to create your own Bizarro world populated with unmodified V3´s and M3´s.

But you cannot change the basic laws of anatomy  in the real world just because you or your client feel like it.

Not as long as you claim to depict the real world in your renders.

Stahlratte

Sorry stahlratte but your way of working out proportions is not accurate, the proportions dont just affect the height of the figure, they also affect things like where the chest is and the hips etc, you cant just add or take away 4 inches from the height to make your proportions fit a real figure.

If you compare photos of nude people with the loomis version, they are really quite different.

Xantor, you constantly mix up "head to body" ratio with the way a person is build.
You also ignore the fact that Loomis shows an "ideal" person, and that I stated several times that an "average" person is shorter, therefore having a smaller "head to body" ratio"

Take two persons of the same height and one might have longer legs and the other a longer abdomen instad, but "head to body" ratio will be more or less exactly the same for both, because the head of a healthy adult person MUST be of a certain size.

And a taller person will have a higher "head to body" ratio than a shorter one.

So sorry, but the charts I showed are perfectly valid for an eight heads tall person.
If you want to show an 7 heads tall person, shorten the legs and scale the head up even more.

Stahlratte

Q:"Not as long as you claim to depict the real world in your renders." wow, wow, wow, now just slow down a bit, mate... all those people with short legs, long torso, big heads, small feet etc...what about them? are the not real? shall we gas 'em effing freaks?.....c'mon ;) when you look around, how many of those deformed cripples can you see? and how many that meet the ideal in size and proportions? i guess the ratio is 10000 to 1, if not worse, right? so maybe your ideal, which, as you say, is the only one worth of being rendered, is a bit unreal? and what if i'd decide that the Venus von Willendorf is, because of some art-historical reasons, the only valid ideal? i start a thread telling people to scale their v3 to 1ft height. and then i am rude to those who disagree? what you wrote about ideal size and proportions is correct (i guess) and interesting. but by now i'd say you carry this a bit too far...

Sigh.

amacord, you too mix up body types with "head to body" ratios.

Yes, people have short legs, long legs, big feet, small feet, etc.

But they don´t have large heads or small heads. At least not "NORMAL" people.

The head of a (healthy) average adult MUST be of a certain size,
It´s a biological fact. If it isn´t that person is severely handicapped.

OF COURSE you can render all the microcephalic people you want. Just don´t claim that that is what MOST people look like in  reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcephaly

"..and what if i'd decide that the Venus von Willendorf is, because of some art-historical reasons, the only valid ideal? i start a thread telling people to scale their v3 to 1ft height. and then i am rude to those who disagree?"

First, you haven´t seen me rude yet.
I´m just fed up when people dismiss scientifical facts like human anatomy as something "optional".

You can of course decide to willfully ignore the facts, that´s everybodys artistic freedom, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
Just don´t pretend they don´t exist because they get in your way.

And no, you cannot decide that the Venus von Willendorf is an "Ideal", because it´s simply not up to a single person to decide something like that.

You can decide that you have a fetish for obese woman and that such a woman is "your" ideal, but "THE" ideal woman is a construct created by a large group of people who all share a common taste.

So open up any fashion magazine or watch a movie, and you´ll see "THE" ideal woman, and it very much will look like Loomis "ideal".

 Wether that "ideal" is healthy, good, right, wrong, or whatever, absolutely doesn´t matter.
That´s a completely different dicussion.

But, at least for the the US and Europe, it "IS".

And it´s also a fact that the majority of people (At least her in Europe), are a lot closer to that ideal than they are to the Venus of Willendorf.

Stahlratte

do you have ideal size and proportions?

This is all based on extreme simplifications. Neither Albinus or Da Vinci, nor Loomis or even Richer could do more that try to get some average. No one really answers to that. Luckily.

The intention of people/teachers like Richer  was not to get their students to draw like that but to get them so far that they could compare the human being they saw in front of their eyes with that  template they had in their minds.

Loomis was perhaps a bit of an exception as he did loads of commercial work, and taught illustrators more than artists which does not strive for realism but a mean value.

"...do you have ideal size and proportions?"

While that has absolutely nothing to do with the statistical average proportions of US and Europe citizens, I can say that I´m a lot closer to the current western "ideal" than both V3, M3, or the Venus of Willendorf.  :-)

And again, you can be an extreme annorexic underweight or morbidly obese, and you STILL will have an "ideal" or "average" head to body ratio if you are of a certain height.
And your arms will still end up halfway on your thighs.
And your legs will be of a certain lenght.

That´s why people can use premade clothes.
Because most of us are different, but not AS different than DAZ tries to make us believe.

Stahlratte

Firstly this here is the actual page from the book containing the illustration you are getting worked up about:

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/2674/loomis01hr2.jpg

And the one after that:

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8821/loomis02gt9.jpg

Notice the underlined parts ? Loomis himself was a very very well trained illustrator. He knew exactly what the media of his times demanded from an artist and he followed those rules just like we all do. Thats called being a professional. That you actually chose his work as your model for 'reality' is really quite amusing...

Secondly I am sorry to say this, but you are a very typical example of an engineer posing as artist i see occasionally. The same sort of people who draw up facial feature 'maps' or spend years collecting stat data on beautiful people trying to reduce beauty to mathematical formulas. Sorry mate it doesn't work that way... yes there are so called 'laws' of proportions, but they are 'laws' in the artistic sense, not absolute numbers that every one must follow. In fact they are not even terribly accurate in a real medical sense, but since they help the average artist to work from a firm footing, we fudge over the details and let em stand. They are meant to be a base to build on, not the kind of absolute gospel truth you are getting blue in the face about.

The only real guide to life is LIFE, not your own silly ideas of what it 'should' be.

"No one really answers to that."

Sorry, but science has the human shape pretty much nailed down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

We now can exactly say what is "average" and what is not.

It has nothing to do with art.

It´s a purely mechanical thing.

If using default V3 makes you "feel" better, more power to you.

Just be aware the she is NOT build like 95% of the people you meet in real life.

Stahlratte

"...are a very typical example of an engineer posing as artist i see occasionally."

I take that as a BIG compliment, because I´m proud to be a skilled craftsmen, not an "artist".  :-)

"The same sort of people who draw up facial feature 'maps' or spend years collecting stat data on beautiful people trying to reduce beauty to mathematical formulas. Sorry mate it doesn't work that way..."

Actually, it does:

http://www.beautyanalysis.com/index2_mba.htm

Sorry to bust your bubble, but the "mystery of beauty" has been nailed down, too.

I´m pretty much fed up with the "artistic" types who inflict their "vision" on others.
Yes, my dream would be a model 100% based on the laser scan of a human being, with no "artistic" modifications whatsoever.
Not necessarily "ideal", but just a good AVERAGE.
Nothing added to make it look more "pleasantly"
Just 100% raw reality.

As a modeller I treat the human shape absolutely no different than any other shape.
As a scale modeler  who builds prototypes, correct shape and dimensions are crucial.
If my model is a tiny fraction of an inch "off", it isn´t a realistic representation of reality.

IWhile humans come in different shapes, I again want to get the dimensions as accurately as possible.

What I want is an accurate representation of a human being, not someones elses "artistic vision" of it.
I don´t care that the masses have been brainwashed into accepting "artistic" exaggerations as normal.

Look at an old car leaflet of the 60´s.
The cars are shown completely distorted to make them look bigger, better, roomier and sexier.

You might prefer a 3d model of that car the way  it looks in that  exaggerated drawing, but I want to have a model that was made after the real cars blueprints, so that it is an accurate representaton of the real thing.

The artistic part comes AFTER the modelling is done.
By creating expressions and poses.
By creating an environment and using certain lights.
By telling a story.

THATS when the "art" starts.

Again, too many modellers think of themself as "artists" when they really should improve their "craft".

Cutting corners is not "aristic".

Stahlratte

in the beginning i planned to carry this to a point of "but-your-science-says-you-can-not-exist". unfortunately Gongyla came a bit too early with her (correct) statement, that the whole thing is a template and not a law of science - and shot the fun of this argument down in flames winks to G. c'mon, man! a science saying that a woman must have a height of 5'7"...... :b_overwhelmed:

I think people are being a little bit unfair to Stahlratte for bringing this issue up.  Just looking at V3 you can see she's either got a) a really small head, or b) she's unreasonably tall, which is what has moved me to mess around with body scaling for my own characters in many cases (not that I'm any expert, but I know an uberly butch Amazon when I see one).  Hiding this pretty obvious visual scale problem behind "art" is nonsense.  I had thought the entire point of Victoria and Michael are that they're supposed to be as generic and "average" as possible, and to allow the user to modify from there as desired - but from the sound of some of the posters here, it would be "artistically OK" to have her head be the size of a baseball in relation to her body and some people wouldn't blink at it.  Sure people vary in size and shape, but I have to agree that the starting point is way too supermodel/basketball player in relation to most humans.

There is no reason to take a poke at a person for systematizing something like this - it doesn't make you or them any more or less correct.  People who are married to the current shape of V3 aren't morally superior for sticking to that standard, any more than someone who points out its flaws are morally inferior (or vice versa).  The "you're an engineer pretending to be an artist" comment was cheap, snooty, and irrelevant - art and engineering are both just ways of quantifying the world.  Leonardo da Vinci wouldn't have appreciated such a comment, as much as his name has been tossed around here.

ps: bigger pecs plz.

"He knew exactly what the media of his times demanded from an artist and he followed those rules just like we all do. Thats called being a professional. That you actually chose his work as your model for 'reality' is really quite amusing..."

Yes, I´m fully aware that Loomis "ideal" human is..."IDEAL".

Why ? Because it says so on top of the page.  :-)

But people DO grow taller in the US and Europe on average, so his "Ideal" of the 1940´s has become more the "average" of 2006.

Personally I prefer a 7 1/2 head ration for men and 7 heads for woman, but as people around here are so used to V3´s 9 head ratio, I rather didn´t want them to be scared away.

You already admitted that an 8-heads tall fully grown adult woman looks like a "teenager" to you, so what must a "really" realistic 7-heads tall average woman look like to you ?

Stahlratte

So for those who think "Ideal" is too IDEAL, here is a bit of "real" REALITY:

EuroMiki scaled to match a real live ADULT FULLY GROWN UP
7 head tall woman:

The ONLY things I did was to shorten her legs and slighly shorten her forearms.
Everthing else lined up perfectly.
No other differences between her and the 7 1/2 heads tall original version.

Now let´s say she´s 5' 5" tall, the EXACT US average for caucasian woman, and compare her with V3:

With both having the same head size, like in real live, like predicted, Vicky is now even taller. (6'11" ).

And you now can also easily see why all the Poser children look so horribly wrong to me.
Designed to match Vicky 3, they look way too old compared to a REALISTIC grown up woman.

Stahlratte

The V3 on the right really needs some 5 inch stiletto heels to make her look right.  That'd be frikken sweet.

@pjz99 big hands for your [edit=previous]comment. stahlratte brought an interesting theme and his rumIS smart. v3 IS unnecessarily tall (although i'm ok with 94%) and her head IS too small. one has to praise him for taking the trouble of making all those images to demonstrate his thoughts. as far as i'm concerned, the poking is for "You have the artistic freedom to do what you want in your renders, so feel free to create your own Bizarro world populated with unmodified V3s and M3s." and the likes. that kind of having an argument drives me straight to the barricades. reminds me of my old man, if you know what i mean... @stahlratte der ton macht die musik, stimmt's? lass' gut sein, alter, hast eh recht...

^^ you and I are in the same ballpark, I had scaled my "ideal" main model down to 95% and her head up a bit to keep proportion, to 103%.  I really like the fit look of Blackhearted's GND2 character so I started from there, but I took a lot off the breasts and put in some tummy.

"der ton macht die musik, stimmt's? lass' gut sein, alter, hast eh recht..."

Genau. Und wenn Leute (Und damit mein´ ich jetzt nicht Dich) in einen Thread hineinwalzen und sagen das die wissenschaftliche Arbeit von Jahrhunderten praktisch Blödsinn ist, dann handel ich halt ganz nach dem guten alten Sprichwort:
Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es hinaus.

Tut mir Leid, aber mit Ignoranten hab ich keine Geduld. Ich teile mein Wissen gern mit anderen, aber wer Dumm bleiben will, der darf es gerne bleiben.

Den herablassenden Ton allerdings kannst Du Dir gerne sparen.
Für die Probleme mit Deinem Vati kann ich nix.
Falls dir solche Übertragungen öfter passieren, empfehle ich mal einen geigneten Therapeuten aufzusuchen.

:-)

Stahlratte