Walker

I'm trying to sneak a concealed apartment into the top of a build, but the distance between floor and ceiling is around 3.7m. Is that too low based on the average height of an avatar?

How low would you go?

Cailyn Miller

I usually make ceilings at least 5m up.. any lower and I just get frustrated losing my cam into the upper floor/roof/hidden dungeon or whatever.

Mind you, I suck at making buildings.

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Tyche Shepherd

I have a lot of hidden caves and cellars on my build which do tend to be height restricted and I have relatively short avi height (c.5'8" for me - smaller for my survey Alt) . One of my hidden places just works with camera positions - though sometimes it ends up in the ceiling - The Height from ground to ceiling is 3.44 metres - I designed it to be the lowest height which worked - (it is a Cell so needed to be claustrophobic)

I think your 3.7m would be OK for me but that's less than a foot difference so many bigger Avi's will find it unworkable.

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Walker

Drat. It looks like I'll have to abandon the apartment idea. I just can't put the ceiling any higher because it would ruin the proportions of the building. Never mind.

Walker

Hmm, I just did a search at the official forum and noticed Chosen Few saying 4m high ceilings are standard in his/her builds.

SL Forums

I was getting a little worried because the lowest ceiling height elsewhere in my build is 4m (although most are higher).

Vaelissa Cortes

5m is a generous ceiling height I think, works for me anyway!

Similar McMillan

3-3.5m, but only if the build doesn't have walls (or at least is open on several sides). I usually use ~4m even in such cases, though, as that still feels low for most avatars (i.e. if I want to create some sort of 'intimate' atmosphere or such) and causes fewer problems.

I would say that it depends much on the rooms you have; if they are large and simple, you should be able to get away with a lower ceiling, but if fancy navigation is required, you really need height.

The lovely cam glitches will probably flip the cam into the next sim no matter what you do, though...

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Jo Sapeur

Well, the minimum ceiling height I'm using for my builds is between 3.5 and 4 meters, but I tend to make the rooms a bit higher (up to five meters), especially living rooms and other locations where people are likely to spend a lot of time, sending teleports to friends.
Since teleporting avatars appear one or two meters above the floor, they can easily end up one level higher when the ceiling is too low.

caroline ra

Yep 5 is about the standard I use....also a lot depends on the style...if its a georgian/regency style I tend to make the ceiling high on the ground floor at say 6 and get progressively lower on each floor. Same with modern builds, higher ceilings just make the proportions look better. Likewise with smaller tudor style cottages, lower ceilings .... I try not to drop below 4.5 tho if ppl have to live in them and place furniture.
Thats another thing that its almost impossible to take into account....the scale of different creators furniture...some Ive seen swamped by builds looking more like dolls furniture where the avi only just fits in the seat and others where the seats come 1/2 way up the wall.

Walker

Well, it looks like I'll have to rebuild. I lost all sense of proportion while building on OpenSim I'm afraid. I just looked around on the main grid and have come to the conclusion that 4.5m is the best minimum.

I can't just enlarge my existing build because it's in multiple linked sections and there are too many 10m prims. I don't want to touch mega prims either because transferring between OpenSim and the main grid will become a nightmare.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board. I was just about to start texturing too (my favourite bit).

Parker McTeague

4.5 is a good height. i won't go below 4.25 because of problems i've had in the past of people getting off furniture or teleporting in and ending up on the second floor. 4m is the minimum for just walking around though. any lower and the chase cam view gets cramped.

yeah, that's the problem. to get 4-5m ceilings and maintain normal proportions, you need to have oversized doors and windows, which can end up with door handles and window sills at silly heights. also, the rooms need to be wider to balance the high ceilings.

good luck with the concealed apartment sounds like a fun project. will you have a hidden entrance behind a bookshelf?

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Humps

Likewise ...I have always found that go too low and it's a bugger getting off furniture, tp'ing in etc. I tend to work at 5 - 6 depending on the style of what it is I am building.

It's a swine really because I hate things to look too bulky/top heavy but there is always a compromise to be made between that and useability.

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Aisuru Rieko

well bugger. I'm starting to think I built my house way too tall. I think the walls are 7 or 8 meters. I guess I need to lower everything down, might look a bit less imposing and it'll make the estate happy too

Jo Sapeur

I'm pretty sure that if we would view the real world from a point several meters behind and above our heads, our sense for architectural beauty would be radically different.

Isablan Neva

I tend to go with 6 or 7 m ceilings to accommodate camera. It's one thing to pass through a room with a low ceiling but I get really cranky when continually ending up caming into the floor above because I'm trying to get in close to look at something. Plus the average avatar height is around 7' and then add in shoes.... But that's just me and I dislike claustrophobic spaces.

Jessyanne

I usually use 5.5. I hate getting cam stuck. The lowest ill do is 4.2

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Walker

Hehe. Not quite. I suppose concealed is the wrong word really. It just wouldn't be (shouldn't be!) obvious to anybody viewing the building.

I'm trying to build a small, back-street cinema in the art-deco style. I had built the entire structure except for the rear wall, and was happy with everything except the back of the building. It just looked too square. I figured if I could fit an apartment into the roof cavity above the auditorium (for my own use, instead of a skybox), this would allow me to add certain details (windows & a balcony at the top/rear), and lend some curvature to the rear that would make it look more attractive to anybody viewing the building from that side. (Like other residents in the sim.)

Hmm, I'm finding it difficult to convey my idea without giving the impression I'm trying to tack a completely alien build onto another build, but that's not the case at all. The windows (in theory) should just look like a light source for the auditorium, as opposed to the windows of an apartment.

I'm rebuilding anyway, and I'll just scrap the apartment idea if it doesn't work out.

Parker McTeague

doesn't sound like it. i like seeing when functional requirements make something look better/more interesting. good approach to it, i think.

if it's just for yourself, don't worry too much about ceiling heights. you can probably go lower than 4m until you bump into some annoyance.

Ingrid

6m is what Iv'e found to be comfortable. Otherwise you'll see the ceiling when you're in it and that gives you that awful cramped feeling when you walk around.

Sveid Heidenstam

For my own build, most areas have a 4 meter ceiling. Two decks have a 4.5 meter ceiling, which in retrospect I feel is excessive, and the lowest ceiling is probably 3.6 meters.

The build has a respectable amount of traffic, caters to a number of larger avatars, and I have never had anyone suggest these ceilings were too low.

I imagine that 3.7 would work fine if camera issues are all that you are worried about. However, standing up from furniture can create additional issues. Though, you may be able to solve that with a simple unsit script which drops the avatar in front of the furniture, rather than SL's default of tossing an avatar upwards.

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Gonta Maltz

I script my ceiling to move down 0.25m for every avatar in the building, to keep a close and compact social atmosphere.