Eyebrows

My avatar has grey hair but I want to give it darker eyebrows, because they are practically invisible. Can I do that somehow with the normal sliders, or do I have to buy some eyebrows? If the latter, can someone recommend a shop?

Depends on your skin. If the skin is modifiable and includes enough alpha in the right parts of the face tattoo texture, it's possible to use the sliders. Most current photorealistic skins are opaque, however, and often no-mod (which hardly matters, since they're 100% opaque, so no mods would show anyway).

The slider-driven eyebrows are pretty crappy anyway, so you may want some prim ones instead. (Unfortunately I don't know of a source, myself.)

Yeah what Qie said...

Eyebrows generally are not going to be modifiable, even with the alpha layer, you wont see much of a difference if you try.....or else there's too much alpha layer and ya get a weird patch of skin that doesn't match the rest of the face. (I discovered that little atrocity when I bought a skin that had modifiable eyebrows......yeah right....if ya wanna look like Bozo with big pale patches of skin over yer eyes, sure.....)

Anyway.....you might be able to find some prim brows.....wish I could tell ya where, but I'm not sure. The one thing you CAN adjust with your eyebrows, however, is their shape. If you go into the eyebrow sliders......you'll be able to adjust the height , arch and pointiness......which might actually affect your look quite a bit, even without adding color. Eyebrows are an area that a lot of folks overlook......but the brow shape and height can dramatically effect the over all look of the face.

The easiest solution to this is to get a bald cap with eyebrows. This rezzes as "Hair" and shows "under" your prim hair. I have several bald caps that came with hair and/or skins, but I'm not sure where to tell you to get one. You might already have one in your inventory without knowing it.

If the above solutions don't work, what may be needed is a new skin (assuming you're not using the default SL skin). Different skins have different emphasis on the brows (I have accumulated about 10 different skins over the years and can confirm this by using it on the same shape) and you should shop around and try demos to see which suit you best.

This is a relatively expensive solution to your problem but do bear it in mind if all else fails.

I am using the default hair, so a bald cap wouldn't be practical - and that's probably why the eyebrows are so useless.

Anyway, what I have done for now is bought some thick-rimmed spectacles which were a very reasonable price, and they have defined my eye area a bit. I haven't been told I am fat and ugly so often since putting them on

wait a sec.

The "bald cap" is really just a set of system hair settings, with length and so on set at 0.

The system hair settings control the eyebrows.

So if you get a bald cap that's modifiable, you can change your brows. Or you can do the same thing with any system hair style you've created.

There's something I am not understanding then. Can't I only wear one hair at a time? Changing my hair colour appears to change my eyebrow colour to the same as the hair.

I don't want a "prim" hair, because I have taken a really long time to get my normal hair just right and the prim hair is quite trendy compared with the look I am trying to acheive for my old lady avatar. Why don't they have eyebrow pencil in the default appearance panel anyway? They have about 6 different eyeshadow sliders and several lip settings but nothing for eyebrows?

You *will* wear one system (non-prim) hair at any time (even if you're also wearing prim hair over it). And yes, the shape and color of the eyebrows is all determined by that system hair, as Lindal mentioned (so if you Save your Hair settings, the eyebrow shape will go with it; if those hair settings were bald, you'd have made yourself a "bald cap" with your own eyebrow settings).

Because the eyebrows are visibly changing color with your hair settings, we know that whatever skin you're wearing is transparent enough that the system eyebrows show through. To change the color match between the hair and eyebrows, one or the other (or both) will have to be replaced/augmented with prims.

I know that having one set of color sliders control both eyebrows and system hair is annoying...but it's sort of realistic too. Most people have matching hair and brows.

Enter the eyebrow pencil. With a lot of skins, the brows are painted on, completely covering the system brows. You may be able to find a skin with makeup and brows that you like.

Actually it's not entirely true. Hair on your head tends to go grey earlier than the facial hair, so there is probably up to about 10 years in anyone's life where they do have their eyebrows and beard darker than their head hair.

I'll keep my eyes open for prim eyebrows and in the meantime the spectacles have helped a lot

Well, and as it happens I am trying to make my avatar look like me in real life, and although my hair is very gray I only have a few white hairs in my brown eyebrows. Having to look eyebrowless is preventing me from looking like me at all. It should have been a setting under makeup I think, at least.

Good luck. Creating a good RL likeness with an avatar is one of the toughest jobs in SL. If you are REALLY serious about it, and willing to spend significant money (RL significant, not SL significant), see Second Skin Labs' web page. They offer a custom service to create you a shape and skin from photos you send them.

There's another outfit doing this too, for MUCH less. But the product looks (IMO) downright creepy.