Avatar Guidelines

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The World Builder's Guild recognizes and endorses these guidelines offered by blaxxun.

First of all, an avatar is nothing more then a very compact world fulfilling some constraints in dimensioning, file size, and interface. The constraints come from the fact that your avatar must be loaded from each other visitor of the world, and becomes part of the world, affecting system resources, navigation speed etc. So be reasonable folks!

	Your avatar should fit within a cube of 3 meters size.
	Put the avatar's origin point inside it's "head" i.e. where you want others to "look you in the eye".
	Use orientation to make the avatar look "forward"
	It's VRML code should not define any lights nor turn of Collision.
	It should not have more than 500 polygons
	It should have no or at least not more than 1 texture (for full textured avatars, multiple textures can be arranged in one texture) Texture file 30KB or less.
	It's zipped file size should be less than 30K
	If you want to provide gestures for VRML 2.0 avatars, you must wrap the avatar in a so-called prototype interface.
	The first node in the VRML file should result to the Avatar instance, i.e. Group node or an instance of a Avatar Prototype.
	Enable expensive animations only if the Avatar is visible, i.e. using a VisibilitySensor.
	If there is complex geometry use LOD in order to display different versions of the Avatar depending on distance.
	Your avatar file must reside be on a web site.

Additionally, the avatar must be in compliance with the Cybertown constitution (nothing offensive in a family atmosphere; no nudes, no "private parts" avatars, no sexually suggestive touching, no racially derogatory avatars, etc...).

Your avatar should not harass other avatars through attaching them to a bound viewpoint without a mechinism for the "subject" to bail out or defend theirselves.

Your avatar should not use an anchor to link to your website, the extra graphics burden causes some folks to crash.

You should not wear a house, a building, or a full blown world as your avatar.

Your avatar should not feature a continously running animation, this burns up resources for everyone. Use a sensor (touch, proximity, etc...) or make it a gesture.

Your avatar should not have continously looping sound files or excessively large sound files (keep them less than 20KB).

A typical humanoid avatar is 1.75 meters in height. Her eyes should be at 0 0 0, her feet should be at y=-1.7 meters.

If you need to make sure your avatar has her feet on the floor or is within the desired 3 meter cube size guideline, please visit 008's mall scale page.

If you want to test your avatars gestures/animations after she has been uploaded to your website, you may want to visit blaxxun's avatar arena. When you get there, right click on your name and select properties then input the URL for the avatar you wish to test.

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