Is there a way to change eyebrow color for custom hair?

[Karen]

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

[JenW]

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

[Karen]

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

[JenW]

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

[RainbowTigress]

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.

[Karen]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

I believe Hairfish has done it for facial hair. 

[Zeljka]

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)

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, it'd be ok in Veronaville!

[Zeljka]

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.

[Zythe]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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.

[Karen]

You can also change eyebrow colours with SimPE, by editting genetics

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

[RainbowTigress]

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.

[Karen]

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

[RainbowTigress]

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

[Ancient Sim]

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. 

[Karen]

To avoid this problem, open up your custom hair in SymPe & click on the Propert Set. Make sure it's the Plugin view. Look for the line that says Proxy. You need to change that value to match what the hair color actuall is so the custom hair will get the correct colored eyebrows.

00000001-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for Black
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for Brown
00000003-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for Blond
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for Red
00000002-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 for Grey

Click commit & then save the hair. Check all of your custom hair because a lot of people making custom hair do not even know they have to change this value if they are making as you say a black hair into a brown hair.

Once the Proxy value is correct the genetics will work properly.

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

Karen

[RainbowTigress]

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

[Karen]

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

[RainbowTigress]

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.

[Hairfish]

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.

[RainbowTigress]

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.

[Hairfish]

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. 

[Karen]

With Nightlife, you can use whatever color brows you want to, regardless of hair color.

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.

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. 

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