I'm currently working on a dining set, and i've been struggling with scaling the chairs and table properly. This is not a problem specific to this project, everytime I make a mesh from scratch I find myself spending an awful amount of time making small adjustments to the proportions, and it always feel like something is off, which is rather frustrating as the mapping and texturing need to be re-done accordingly.
I try to use Maxis' objects as a reference but i also get the impression that they don't have a consistent scale across them? most of their furniture looks quite bulky, not that it is too big for the Sims, but some parts (like chair legs) look thicker compared to the overal size of the object. My guess is that it is made so that details are still fairly visible from a distance and properly rendered with the minimal game specs.

So I'm thinking maybe i should make the legs and seat of my chairs thicker, while keeping the same overall width and height? But also, IRL formica furniture is on the smaller side as far as dining tables and chairs go. Maybe this is just me being finicky, or i've just spent too much time looking at these chairs (like when you think of a word too much and it loses its meaning )



Is this something you have struggled with too? Do you have any tips for getting the scale of objects right so that they don't look odd in game? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

I always scale to the maxis item I clone so the sims using it looks normal.  The heights for game objects that are usuable, for each type, almost always have the same height.   Dining/end table heights are .8, coffee tables are .5 counters are 1.0.   I use Milkshape, so I mesh each grid in MS as one tile in game.  I know Wings is the same grid size, no idea about Blender.

I use Wings3D, I never noticed that the grid matched with the in-game one! This will definitely be useful info. In this specific case i didn't have any trouble aligning the height of the seat, actually that was the easiest part since there's not a lot of room for interpretation.
I wonder what would be the dimensions of a tile irl though, i guess somewhere around 80x80 cm

One tile IRL I've always thought to be between 2.5 and 3 feet.