Problems with eyelashes and lips

So I started to make my own skin , stayed up many nights and I have finished both the top and the bottom parts (however they will need re-touching at the end) , and now im on to the face.
Well I have managed to shade the face well , and get the eye shadow , eye liner and blusher to sit nicely but my problems are I want to make the lips look more 3D , how do I etch in the little lines and form the mouth to prepare it for colour?
Also as I'm using Robin's templates , ive noticed on the right-hand side of the template there are some brown eyelashes , I have been uploading the template with the eyelashes still there but on my avatar they are coming up as these awful 'wooden' beige coloured eyelashes and hiding the eyeshadow.
Do I need to alter the eyelashes , or even add them on to the lash line , I am learning as I go along , so I am a little inexperienced.
Thanks for your help.

Leave the top right corner of the face texture transparent to get the default black lashes.

For the lips, shade, highlight, and shine.

Do a quick search on "aditi" if you aren't already using the beta grid for free texture uploads for testing - it'll save you a bunch of lindens.

i was doing this too until namssur (god, I've probably spelled that name differently and incorrectly about 5 billion times now), posted a much more elegant solution.

I made a photoshop action which resizes my three textures to 512x512, then saves them with proper transparance in Targa format to a directory on my hard drive.

There, I created two command files. The first of these is the magic one. It copies those textures to the SL texture directory replacing the default SL textures. Now, simply create a new skin and assign no textures to it. When you wear this skin, you will see the "default textures" which you just replaced with yours. Presto. Instant gratification with no uploading at all. You can update the textures and rebake to see the changes. VERY handy trick. Note that everyone else will see you in the default "noobie skin" so try to remember to wear a real skin before going out in public *laughs*.

The second command file takes the three texture files and renames them properly based on command line input so instead of "head", "upper" and "lower", they get names like "Eve 1_0 Head Light Classic" or somesuch.

Well, actually if you let the textures re-rez everyone gets to see the ones you are looking at. It takes about 20-30 seconds on it's own, but if you want to force it, just hit "rebake textures" or toggle anisotropic filtering on and off.

Hey everyone , in Photoshop I made the part where the lashes are , transparent , but now the lashes come up still in that cardboard look but now in white!
Does anyone know how I can put my own custome eyelashes , or at least just use the normal black SL ones?

I appreciate all your help.

If you're getting white thick eyelashes, then something in that area is not transparent (solid white, it sounds like, from your description). I would double check the file settings and make sure you are uploading a 32 bit TGA file, or that the transparency is being preserved before saving out to TGA. Maybe a revisit to the alpha channel sticky, here, can clear things up.

Hi Phaedra!

The transparency isn't something you can do on a layer, unless you upload as a .png file.

If you want to use .tga, you need to have an Alpha channel. See the sticky at the top of this forum to learn more about that.

That's why you were getting brown eyelashes, and are getting white ones now.

If you go into your Character folder, open the head_alpha.tga, and paste that black and white image into your Alpha Channel, you'll have what you need.

I have no idea where the Character folder is on a PC; but on a Mac, right click on your SL application icon, and choose "Open Package Contents" from the drop down menu. (Control-click if you have a one button mouse.) From there, you want Contents > Resources > Character, and then just find the head_alpha.tga file. Open it with Photoshop, and you should be able to just copy it, make a new Alpha in the Channel Palette, and paste it in.

It's 512x512, so if you're working larger, you'll want to resize it first.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for all your help! , I managed to get it all working