More Awesome Than You!

When you create custom hair in Body Shop, the eyebrow color seems to be determined by the hair color that you cloned the custom hair from.  For example, if you take a black hair style, clone it, change the color to light brown, and import it into Body Shop, any Sims you create with the new hair style will have light brown hair, but black eyebrows. 

Is there any way to recolor the eyebrows to match the custom hair?  What I'm looking for is a way to change it permanently in the Sim DNA so that the matching eyebrow color will be inherited along with the custom hair color.  That way you would be able to tell by the eyebrow color if a baby has inherited a custom hair style/color, long before the baby grows into a toddler.

Any ideas, or is this just not possible right now?

Karen

I think you can change this on a permanent basis with SimPE, but I'm not sure how. I do have custom hair tones with correct color eyebrows so it's possible.

On a case-by-case basis, you can change their eyebrows to a custom (matching) one when you create the Sim.

Jen

But would this become part of the DNA, i.e. something that could be passed down to future generations?

I tried once to recolor eyebrows in Body Shop and could not figure out how to do it.  I could change the shape but not the color.  (I don't have any problem recoloring other things in Body Shop.)

Karen

I *think* it will be genetic if you do it when you create them. I can't recall offhand though if I've seen it happen or not.

Jen

I've had a problem with exporting eyebrows because no matter what color I export, it always exports black and grey eyebrows.  I wanted to export brown, blonde, and red so I could paste them into a new file and have matching eyebrows for my custom elder hair.  It always bugged me that the game would not allow elders to dye their hair, so I learned how to export adult hair and make it available to elders as a custom style.  But their eyebrows would still be grey and it looked horrible.  Morague made a spreadsheet with all the files in the Sims package files, and I thought if I could find the graphic file the eyebrows used, I could just paste that in, but the eyebrows were too sparse and they didn't show up very well.  They certainly didn't look like they normally do for an adult.  So I am very confused as to how the game creates other color eyebrows besides black and grey.  It seems based on what hair color is selected, and with elders, you can only select grey or custom.  Facial hair seems to work the same way, and I have a male redhead about to turn into an elder, and I have his hairstyle as a custom style he can use, but I cannot figure out how to do his sideburns other than trying to color the grey ones as closely as I can to the red in the hair.  But this is a time-consuming process and it is difficult to tell if the color matches closely enough until you load up the game.  I've tried looking all over MTS2, and there is nothing I can find about this.

Rainbow:  That is the same problem I ran into.  I have no idea how other people are managing to create custom colors for either eyebrows or facial hair. 

Karen

I believe Hairfish has done it for facial hair. 

I don't know how they've done it but I wish they'd done it right.

I don't know how many of my adults transition to elder with no eyebrows at all. Actually, this isn't exclusive to elders, I seem to have a lot of custom eyebrows that seem only to appear for teens and adults. I forget until I get browless babies and toddlers... the problem is, I can't delete them until I figure out how to change the DNA in SimPE as I'd hate my whole neighbourhood to be browless... (as it almost is anyway)

Well, it'd be ok in Veronaville!

Veronaville, is that the Romeo and Juliet one?

I deleted default 1 and 3 after snooping around and occasionally use 2 for testing. If only the 'eyebrowless' feature showed up on the bloody skins with brows painted on to them (my other grrr) I would be set.

Using DatGen's hairtoner, you can assign it a genetics bin, which means blonde hair can now be recognised as blonde hair and get blonde eyebrows. You can also change eyebrow colours with SimPE, by editting genetics, and through the in-game mirror, under change appearance :)

Remember, too, that not everyone who has blond hair has blond eyebrows!  My hair was always fair, though my eyebrows are midbrown, and though my hair has now gone naturally almost white, my eyebrows haven't changed at all.

How, exactly?  I know where the DNA information is in SimPE but I don't know which string to edit to change the eyebrow color.

Karen

I don't know much about using Datgen.  I downloaded it but I couldn't figure out how to really use it to make changes, although I did open my neighborhood and look through the characters.

As for changing eyebrow colors in SimPE, I did this with a couple of characters, and you have to open the Sim's actual file.  Depending on the version of SimPE you are using, you can copy the path and filename by right clicking on it in the grey area above the sim's description, or in the new SimPE, you can click Open sim's character file in the extended menu I think, I don't have it open right now, but it's the icon at the end.  Under Material Definition, you'll see several files, depending on whether the sim was generated in CAS or born in game.  They pertain to different life stages.  You'll see that one has grey hair and eyebrows, so that is for Elder.  Now this is a bit complicated and I'm not sure how to explain it, but I just bungled my way through and it worked for two babies I changed.  I changed everywhere I saw the color I wanted to change to the new color.  There are some tabs as well above that area, and I changed those too, everywhere I saw the unwanted color.  If I get a chance, I'll try to go back and do it and write a little better instructions, and maybe I can get some screenshots.  I've always found it easier to do stuff than to tell others how,  ::)  When I loaded the game, the baby had the right color eyebrows.  I had changed her haircolor from black to red in her genetics since her father was a redhead and her mother had black hair with a recessive red gene. :)

You have to change all the strings for every life stage that there is a Material Definition for in the file.

Thanks.  Now I just have to test it to see if the changed colors are automatically passed down to the babies, or if you have to fix the babies' eyebrow colors in SimPE after they are born.

Karen

It looks like the numbers are the same for brown, red, and grey.  Is this correct?  How does the game know the difference?

It's 4 for red and 5 for grey.  I do this with all my custom colours so they appear in the normal section instead of custom (they still have the asterisk, so you can recognise them).  I just wish I could find out how to change hair that comes a little lower down on the body.  I use crammyboy's penis hack, but when I change the hair colour it doesn't change the hair on the actual skin, above the 'part that matters', just what's below it, which looks rather peculiar.  It only really dawned on me when I got that hack that all the replacement default nude skins I've tried have brown pubic hair. 

Thanks, I'll try that.  I tried Rainbow's method described above but it doesn't really do what I was looking for.

Karen

What I described was more for fixing sims already born if you want to change their genetic hair color and have their eyebrows match.

I tried changing the proxy value to my custom hair color, dcbf7a8f-4cbe-9f9a-d352-d18d3a79c17a.  There was no effect on my Sims in the neighborhood, but the custom hair disappeared from both the in-game CAS and the Change Appearance screen.  As soon as I changed the proxy back to the standard brown 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, the custom hair was available again.

After playing around with the hair files in SimPE, I have come to the conclusion that what I want to do (have the eyebrows show up as a custom color that matches the custom hair) is not possible, at least with the current tools.  You *can* change the eyebrow color, but only to the standard black, brown, blond, or red.  So if you have a Sim with light brown hair, there is no way to make light brown eyebrows to match, which is what I was trying to do.

If anybody has any other ideas, please let me know.  Otherwise I think I'm going to give it up for now.  Thanks to everybody who tried to help.

Karen

And if the sim is an elder, they are stuck with grey brows unless you have custom ones from somewhere.  But even these, depending on how they are made, will sometimes only have grey brows for elders even if they had different colors for the adults.  I am very disappointed in the limited options for elders.  They truly are second class citizens in this game. :(

I have Maxis-Matching custom brows here:
http://www.hairfish.com/mermaidcove/html/2eyes.html
Bottom of page.

I think they're still grey in the Elder stage. Not sure...something I need to check!  ???

Anyway, they're available to Children on up, and to Toddlers if you use the Toddler Mirror. Mismatched eyebrows drive me buggy, too, but I'm too chicken to try to edit anything in SimPE or DatGen.

I meant to say thank you before when I went to your website.  These eyebrows are exactly what I was looking for!  Those grey eyebrows drive me batty!  Not everyone's eyebrows go grey at the same time their hair does, and I think elder females should be able to use some eyebrow pencil anyway to enhance their eyes.  One request, is it possible to make the brushed version of the Maxis eyebrows?  Or can you tell me how you extracted them?  I tried extracting them from the objects files, but they looked very sparse compared to the ones in the game.

I'm sure the brushed brows can be done just like the others. No special method of extraction...just BodyShop.

With Nightlife, you can use whatever color brows you want to, regardless of hair color. You could always use mirrors to change brow color, but now there's a color selection at the top of the screen, like the Hair area has. If that's always been there, then I'm blinder than I thought.  :-\

Regardless of hair color?  I don't think this is true, since there does not appear to be any way to create eyebrows that are NOT the standard black, brown, blond, or red colors.  If all you want to do is switch between these standard colors, then you're right, it works, but that was true before NL.  If you want to use a custom color, there's still no way to do it.


I just checked in the game, in both CAS and the "Change Appearance" screen on the mirror.  I don't believe anything has changed with NL.  You can change the color of eyebrows, but only to the standard black, brown, blond, or red.  There is no * symbol to allow you to change to a custom color for eyebrows.

Karen

All my custom eyebrows appear in all the eyebrow bins - you can have any custom eyebrow with any colour hair.  Is that what you mean?  You're right, at least with Bodyshop, there are no colour bins available, the Maxis options you get seem to be dependent on hair colour.

When using "Change Appearance" at mirrors, there are color choices under Brows, and they're all available no matter what the hair color. Below is a Maxis blonde with Maxis brown brows. Notice there's no asterisk by the brows ~ they're Maxis. These choices are also available if you have a custom haircolor on the Sim being changed.

The reason I don't think this was available before Nightlife is...well, if it was available, why would anyone have asked me to create "Maxis Matching" custom brows??

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Hairfish/maxisbrows_adult.jpg)

If you choose a different brow color, then click on Hair, the brows will revert to a matching color. But if you choose hair first, then brows, they'll stay whatever color you choose.

Elders don't get all color choices, but they do get all custom brows. Of course, you have to have some custom brows in your files that have the Elder state recolored, otherwise the only choices are white, white, or white.  ;) I didn't recolor the Elder state in my "Maxis Matches," but I'll rectify that soon, for those who don't have these options. Below is an Elder with Maxis grey hair, and some alien brows for which I recolored both states (Elder, and "everyone else").

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Hairfish/custombrows_elder.jpg)

OK, re-reading, I see we're talking about completely different things, here. Sorry!

I have aliens with very obvious custom brows in my game. I'm not sure whether the babies I made when I created their families had the custom brows, since it never occurred to me that they wouldn't. I have to go check, or this will bug me all day.  :P

I think the Maxis eyebrows are hideous.  In my game at any rate they look as if they've been knitted.  They don't look like hair at all, it's like a sort of woolly rope.  I've downloaded ones that look like natural hair and make all the difference in the game.  I don't know why Maxis couldn't have provided eyebrows made of hair instead of wool or rope or whatever they're made of.

Just to set some things straight: the line we're looking for in SimPE is Hair Tone XML. Check proxy(dtString). Change 0000000x-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 to correctly depict your color of choice. Again: 1 = black, 2 = brown, 3 = blond, 4 = red, 5 = grey (i.e 00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is black, 00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is brown, etc). Click on commit. We're not done yet. Check name(dtString). Change the name to the correct one (i.e. Black for black hair, Brown for brown etc). Commit, save, done! I tested this out on a bunch of custom hair yesterday and all worked!


Wool and rope are cheaper! You know how much I'm offered for my hair? :P

I understand what you're saying, but I didn't want black, brown, blond, red, or gray eyebrows.  I wanted eyebrows colored to match a unique custom hair color that I created.  (For example, if you have blue custom hair and you want blue eyebrows to match.)  That is what I was trying to do, and I believe it is not possible.

I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to understand.  I guess I am just trying to do something a little different.  If it was just a matter of altering my light brown custom hair to use Maxis blond eyebrows instead of Maxis brown eyebrows, I don't think I'd be having such difficulty.  What I want is eyebrows that match a unique custom color that I created in Body Shop.  And unfortunately, I don't think you can do this. 

Karen

OK karen, I read you now. Well at least I remedied some errors on the description of how to change custom, maxis-colored hair to match maxis-colored eyebrows. It needed to be done IMO.

Why dont your create custom eyebrows to go with the hair? I dont think there is a way to change the eyebrow color when you create a haircolor.  Thats why everyone so far has had to create a seperate eyebrow file.

I have been trying to do this, too.  I have purple, blue, green, turquoise, pink, etc. hair colors that I made with BodyShop and made matching eyebrow colors for them.  If I made the sim in CAS and used the custom eyebrow color, it is passed on to their children.  But if I made the eyebrow color AFTER I made the sim, and then gave it to them with change appearance, it's not.  They get the color of the hair I used to make the custom hair color.  I even looked at PosieFlump's simdna tutorial at modthesims2 (which I printed for reference!)  and she doesn't make any reference to eyebrow color.  Just hair, skin and eyes.  But I didn't check her link on facial features that are stored in the individual character file, so you might want to take a look.  (Sorry, I don't have a link for you at this moment, but the name of the tutorial was "simdna" I think.)

If I can find it again, I'll take a look at the link and see if eyebrow colors are mentioned there.

Edit: Sorry, my bad.  It's on the sims BBS.  It's title is "Identifying & Changing Sim DNA".  (I couldn't figure out how to do a link.)  And I checked that facial link, but didn't see anything on eyebrows.  If I find anything, I'll let you know.

When I use BodyShop to make brushed eyebrows, I only get black and gray ones, like I mentioned above.  I don't get different colors like brown, red, and blonde.  With Elders, they only have the color selectors for gray and custom eyebrows.  That's why I have been trying to find the four basic color eyebrows to use as custom eyebrows for them, and I think the brushed ones look the most natural.  The "thick" brows look like Ancient Sim said, like rope or wool.  The tweezed look, well, tweezed.  They look painted on.  So that's why I was trying to extract them from the object files, but they did not look like they appear in the game.  They looked very fine and sparse.  So I can't figure out how the game creates the different color eyebrows or other facial hair because everytime I go into BodyShop, I can't find where to select the color and I end up with one file for black and one for gray.  So if you could tell me how you did it, I would be ever so grateful.

That would be fine with me, because my goal is to have them become part of the genetics passed down to future generations.  Just one problem:  like Rainbow, I cannot recolor eyebrows using Body Shop for some reason.  No matter what color I change them to in PaintShop Pro, they always end up black.  I have never had any trouble recoloring other types of custom content in Body Shop.  Can you tell me exactly how you created the matching eyebrow colors for your purple, blue, green, etc. hair? 

Karen

If you've recolored other things, it's exactly the same method.  Just make sure you refresh your sim so they show up on the mannequinn before importing.

In Body Shop, you'll find them under the icon that looks like a mirror, for facial hair, makeup and glasses.  The second row of icons shows the eyebrows as the one on the farthest left.  Any custom color eyebrows will show up there, regardless of what hair color you have selected.

Basically the same in CAS.

Are you sure you're saving them from PaintShop Pro as a bitmap again and replacing the old file?  I usually use Photoshop, and because I use layers and just fill the whole layer with the color I want, I will save the file as a Photoshop file, then save again as a bitmap, making sure I use the original name.

Once the file has been exported and a new project set up, open the bmp files in paint program.
From there, my process goes like this:
1. Create a new layer, fill with desired color.
2. In blending options for the new layer, change the option from "normal" to "color".  I may also use some other blending options if that doesn't give me exactly the color I want.  Some things I've done may take two or more layers to acheive the desired color.  And sometimes, with dark colors especially, I may make one layer that's white and use a percentage of "lighten" or something similar (color dodge, overlay, whatever works) in a layer that's below the color layer, so it lightens first, then adds the color.
3. Save as a Photoshop file so I can perserve the layers and use it again for another recolor.
4. Save it as the original file name (with the .bmp extension) and make sure to replace the original bmp file.  Photoshop will add the word "copy" after I've saved it as a psd file, so I just click on the original file to put that name in the filename "save as" box, then save and replace.
5. Back in Body Shop, click on the little circle arrow to refresh the sim mannequinn to make sure the eyebrows look like I wanted them to.  If not, back to PS.  When they look ok on the mannequinn, give them a name like "blue heavy eyebrows" or whatever, then import to game.

And I just tried using PaintShop Pro 5, basically the same process, and it worked as well.  They showed up in the eyebrow bin like they should.

And I'm using them as part of a genetics game, too.  This is Tourmaline Turquoise, daughter of two CAS turquoise sims who will eventually marry a sim from another color family.  The skin, hair, eyes and eyebrows were inherited from the parents.

BTW, the only colors that will export from BS are black and gray.  You don't get a choice of blonde, red, or brown.

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I don't see any way to select a hair color when cloning eyebrows or other facial hair.


That's what I am talking about.  I know how to color the files and I can make them any color I want.  I've tried coloring them to look like the Maxis brows, but it never comes out quite right.  That's why I was so excited to find Hairfish's eyebrows.  I am curious how she was able to get them to look like the ones in the game.  I would like to have the brushed eyebrows in the four colors (really three - brown, red, and blonde - because I can export the black as you described).

Yeah, it didn't hit me until later that you were probably trying to export a color other than black.  Which is what hairfish was talking about, too, I guess.  My only thought is to maybe open a hair file of the color you want (like red) with the eyebrow file open and try to visually match the color.  I've had to do that with my custom color brows.

And it may be easier to color the gray brow and save it as the color file (black, I guess, since that's all you get), esp. if you are trying for blonde.

Haven't felt the need for doing any custom brow styles yet, but it seems that hairfish could give some pointers.  (Hint, hint, hairfish.  We could all use a little help on that front!  Maybe on how to make the black brow brown to match the brown hair, too, for example.)  I looked at those eyebrows, and they are pretty nice!

Edit: I just tried using the gray file to make a blonde brow with a blonde file open.  Took a few tries with the eyedropper to get a color I liked, but I thought the color matched the hair color pretty good.


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That's a good idea.  I will have to try that.
Yes, give us some hints, Hairfish! LOL.

Thank you so much for finally clearing up my confusion!  I have been trying for three months (off and on) to figure out a way to do this and it turns out to be easier than I ever imagined.  Because you always get black eyebrows when exporting from BS, I figured it was not possible to recolor them.  I may also have been misled by the fact that Body Shop lighting tends to make things look much, much darker than they do in-game, so even when I did recolor some brows to a medium brown in PSP, they came out looking very similar to black when viewed in Body Shop.  That is why I thought that recoloring eyebrows in Body Shop didn't work at all. 

Anyway, thanks again, this opens up a whole new bunch of possibilities for my game. 

Karen

I'm glad you finally got the answer you were looking for!  lol

I was confused by the black/gray choices at first, too, but I figured I might as well give it a try.  Since I did my purple hair from a red hair file, it was really annoying to see the red eyebrows against purple skin and hair.  Yuck!  So I thought, hey if it works, great, if not, make another purple hair file from a different color hair base.  (I really didn't want to do that, though.  Some of those hair styles have a LOT of files when you're doing both sexes and all ages!)

And I wanted to do my own.  I had looked at some skin colors done by other people and they just weren't what I was looking for, so I decided to try doing my own.  When I got a purple and a blue skin that I liked, I just couldn't stop!  Hair, eyes, eyebrows, and I just started doing a couple of beards/stubble colorings. 

I have red, yellow, purple, orange, blue, white (after I found out the mannquinn skin crashed the game when a baby was being born) turquoise and gray skins and at least one (some two) hair styles in pink, green, purple, blue, and turquoise. Both cover all ages.  I think I have matching color eyebrows (just one, the "tweased" brow) for all the custom hair colors.  And I only started doing recolors in April.  Not to mention the clothes, walls, floors, and objects like stoves, refrigerators, bathroom facilities, tables, chairs, beds, etc.  If I had known playing the sims and coloring things was so much fun, I'd have gotten sims 1 a long time ago, instead of about a year ago!  I didn't even know you could do this stuff until after I had gotten sims 2 and uni!

There's no big secret to making other-than-black eyebrows. I just lightened and recolored the black version that BodyShop spewed out, using Photoshop's Hue & Saturation slider, then tweaked them a bit with some overlay shading (not thrilled with how blond came out ~ needs better contrast ~ but it was a quickie job).

The only "trick" to making them match Maxis haircolors is having a hair file open at the same time, and eyeballing it.  ;) You could do the same with any custom haircolor to make matching brows. Export the hair files, and open one to compare the colors as you redo the brows.

If you're going to make Maxis-matching stuff, be sure to save your customization settings (Photoshop lets you do this; I don't know about PSP) for later use. For example, if you make a custom haircolor off a blond Maxis base, you can use the saved settings on your own blond eyebrow base (or mine, with credit!) and they'll match.

===

On the subject of getting custom eyebrows to transfer genetically, that appears to be impossible. Damn it!  ;D My Frosty blue aliens just had a baby, and the poor little freak was born with blond eyebrows (the parents' hair is colored on a blond Maxis base). She's also bald as a cue ball.  :P I'll just have to wait for her to become a Toddler, then use the Toddler Mirror to match her brows to the rest of her.

Offtopic: I would have thought a problem as old as freak-babies would have been fixed by Nightlife, but no-o-o-o-o...

Edit: Sorry 'bout the big pic. I thought it would post a thumbnail to it.


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It's a lot easier than that!

It's true BodyShop only allows you to extract the black/gray versions of facial hair and eyebrows.  However, if you want the other Maxis default colors, just use SimPE to extract them from the Sims12.package file:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Sims3D\Sims12.package

True, you're still going to have to start a project by exporting the black version, but with the other colors available its a simple matter of substitution of the bitmap or using the bitmaps along with hue/saturation, etc. to change them to a non-default custom color.

I swapped out the black ones to create whole sets of modified default facial hair here:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=96860
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=96977

The same thing can be done with eyebrows.

Sorry if someone's already mentioned this, but Heleane makes beautiful custom eyebrows. I use hers all the time, and you can change them on existing sims by using Change Appearance.

http://www.helaene.com/