Eyebrows vs Nothing at all!

Alright.. So on my current skin that I wear, I have no eyebrows. But I thought it'd look better to have some for skins that would have makeup. However, I'm having a terrible time here =x

So first I tried drawing some eyebrow lines and fussing around with it, but it looked terrible. So I tried just clean lines, and that still looks funky.. Been stuck on this for days.. Anyone got some tips? Lol. Or does it even really matter? I haven't seen eyebrows on many AVs, least not that I've noticed..

Ooooh, and also - When I wear my skin's head, I see the mouth on the back of my head!.. Is there a way to fix this, or should I just delete the mouth piece from my template?

The mouth on the old LL templates (now retired) was too wide and bits of it extended over onto the back of the neck. Those bits had to be removed or you'd get a black line on the back neck seam. The newer templates don't have that problem. Is that what you're talking about?

As for eyebrows, I haven't seen many (if any skins) without them. I think some people put them on the default hair bangs but I've never taken a close look at that method and don't know how it works. If you're trying to paint eyebrows, a good method is to blow up the template to about four times normal size (2048x204. Paint the hairs with a small brush (two or three pixels with a soft edge) and give them a soft drop shadow. When reduced back to 512x512 they should look pretty good. Too sharp or too blurry and they don't look realistic.

Ahhh, maybe that's my problem! =p Thank ya much for both your suggestions, shall giving that a try!

thanks for the tip chip, I been stuck with eyebrow painting as well

also did not know that about the mouth on the old templates, I guess that explains why some of my old skins (not made by me) have the little black seam on the back of the head

For realistic looking eyebrows a high resolution photo source can't be beat. The next best thing are custom Photoshop brushes that simulate hair.

The image below is the result of one method I use for isolating hair from skin in a photograph. This works well on high resolution skin templates (2048x204 where individual hair follicles can be isolated. What is shown below is just a sample from a modeling photograph, reduced for the forums.



Using Photoshop:

1. Copy the original image to a new layer

2. Use the Rubber Stamp and Healing Brush to sample out the original eyebow hair.

3. Perform a difference calculation by setting the layer mode of the sampled layer to Difference.

4. Select All, Copy Merged, and paste the copied image on a third layer. This will look mostly black with some colored detail in the spot where the eyebrow was.

5. Clean this third image up a bit with a Level adjust, Hue Saturation adjust, and maybe a few swipes with the eraser and a custom brush tool.

6. Copy this image over to a new channel.

7. Create a new fourth layer using the new alpha channel as a selection mask and fill it with pure white.

8. Set up some layering effects on this 4th layer. Good ones to add are Color Overlay, Bevel & Emboss, and Inner Shadow.

Playing around with layering effects can get nice color variations.

Another more complex method of isolating hair is with a 3rd party masking utility. I still use the old Extensis Mask Pro sometimes, but PSCS3 has some very good masking tools by it's self. This method is more time consuming, but is better for hair that subtly blends into the skin.

Some other things you can do with the alpha channel is cut away the sampled image where the eyebows are and produce an opaque skin with transparent eyebrows. The transparent areas will be reactive to any slider changes you make inside SL while wearing the skin. This is a great way to introduce slider adjustable eyebrows into SL on a much more realistic looking eyebrow. It'still not as realistic as working with the original photo, but much, much better than the default eyebrows.

wow cool posting namssor.

of course you could always cheat a little and turn up the pigmentation on the skin whilst wearing it ( if perms permit?). It does work most of the time. It seem that some of the older base models suffer from this issue. And for now this is how i have got round it quickly, without having too much detrimental effect on the skin.

I notice that whenever i upload such a file........it can look great in photoshop, then as i upload the hair on the eyebrows ( and elsewhere * Blush ) appears as an alpha......ie blank, and its only when i turn up the pigmentation that i can get eye brows to appear.

Now namssor has provided the correct way.........i just gotta practice till perfect.

sorry for hijacking the thread

hugs

You have hit upon the #1 issue I have using slider adjustable eyebrows, lips, textures, etc. on the avatar. They disappear when there is no contrasting color between the defining areas. The final resolution of avatar textures (512x512) makes it extremely difficult to translate highlights and shadows on individual hairs/pixels into a complex alpha channel at that resolution. Even if they are present at a higher resolution, they are lost at the lower resolution. The remaining information is nothing more than a flat color shift. That is why I choose to do virtually all of my production/effects work in Photoshop at 2048x2048 or higher , then flatten and reduce the images to native 512x512 before uploading. It's WYSIWYG.

Thanks, Namssor! =) As I'm not wealthy enough for Photoshop, I'll tinker around with it later with PSP =p I had tried finding a good realistic photo to practice with, but wasn't able to find any good front facing shots - Yours is awesome, though! =)