Hi there,

I am a veritable noob at making anything custom. However, I am trying to make an Emma Watson sim and I think she would really benefit from some different eye brows.

Is there a way to *easily* make new brows? I've looked for a tutorial and couldn't find anything.

Many thanks in advance!!

Great question! I want to know the answer too. I also wonder about custom facial hair. Those are the two things I made a lot of in Sims 2 and am wondering about Sims 3. I need to figure it out if it's possible. I want to make some different mustaches and side burns... the ones in the game are no good, they don't even attach to the hair.

My favorite sim from sims 2 had the goatee with the small mustache and remaking him for the sims 3 just wasn`t the same

I made a try at this, with the results below. It looks awful because I'm an idiot in GIMP - haven't yet figured out how to make the mask transparent instead of just painting over the part of the brow I'm trying to remove. It's showing up as a new eyebrow, but the thumbnail is still the old one - have to figure that out too.

It's a little hard to see because her hair is blonde, but expand the picture.

So far, I think all we can make are default replacement eyebrows. I made a pair or two and put them on my website (link is in my sig & go to the "grooming" page).

However, I noticed that eyebrows in TS3 are quite tricky. The resolution on them is bad, so you lose much of the detail. Plus, it seems to force 2 color tones on brows rather than allowing subtle gradations.


What you need to do is follow Thomas Riordan's tutorial for creating default replacements in order to create your own eyebrows. Tutorial is here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=345670

It looks like you need to change the alpha to match your new brows. I think you need to look at the different RGB layers, in there should be the alpha layer, you need to change those, so they match your main eyebrow layer! Hope that makes sense!

Yes, lots of sense. After much reading about alphas, I basically used the eraser tool to erase the original brow to background and then drew in what I wanted. Second attempt is below. Much better as you can see, but needs work. I was going for Spock brows but they're too narrow.

The thumbnail baffles me. It's generating one - I have HP's smaller pupils mod in my game and you can see the new brow's eye has the smaller pupil. But it's not picking up my eyebrow change. It's quite possible I'm not doing the alpha channel correctly, but it shows up fine on my lovely model Sim.

Also you can see that this is indeed a new, non-replacement brow, with the original 'basic' brow right next to it.

It was surprisingly easy:

Find the XML file and the CAS part file for the brow you want to modify, extract them from Fullbuild0. I prefer Postal for this. What I do is load the nmap names, then click on the name column header to sort by name, then look for the item I want. In this case, "amMakeupEyebrows..."

In the XML, look up the 'face overlay' key, use that to find and extract the dds overlay file from Fullbuild2. (Sort by instance first.) Can also use the new version of CTU to extract this.

Edit the overlay using white where you want the brow to be and erasing unwanted brow to background. (This may not be the best/correct way to edit the image - I'm a noob in doing this kind of texturing.) Save the file.

Edit the XML file in notepad or whatever text editor. Change the daeFileName to whatever name you want. I didn't change the length of the name because then editing the CAS part file would be a pain in the butt.

Use a handy dandy hashing tool like Snaif's excellent FNV generator to make an FNV64 hash of the new file name. In the XML, change the instance ID of the Face Overlay key to this number. Save.

Change the instance IDs of the edited image, the CAS part file, and the XML file to that same new instance number.

Edit the CAS part file in a hex editor and change the part name to your new name. Save.

Use your favorite package editor to import the XML, CAS part file, and edited DDS image file to a new package. I prefer S3PE for this. I also tick off to use the resource name, and name the image file with my new name, although I don't know if it's necessary.

Put in mod/packages and if I've remembered what I did correctly your brows should show up in CAS.

It would be really nice to fix the thumbnail thing. CTU has a thumbnail thingie in this version, but so far I haven't gotten it to work. Maybe someone has ideas?

Edited because my attached pic didn't take.

The site hates me tonight.

Nice job! Glad you figured it out, well everything but the thumbnail! Hopefully somebody will be able to help you with that! I only figured out the default replacements so your post has been very helpful to me!

Thanks for your tip too! I've edited my instructions a bit since when re-reading while fully awake I realized a part was unclear and I left out a step. I'll probably post some fantasy brows but I hope people with better texturing skills than mine will do some better ones.

Success, including the thumbnail. Maybe I'll post a mini-tutorial in a separate thread.

please do
I would love to be able to try this.

your eyebrows look great

customs are possible.. are customs not overridable possible?

I'm not sure what you mean - what would override them?

go onto xmsims.com and click on sims 3, and then simmer valley/makeup and there are some eyebrows.

Are there any updated tutorials as how to use the CTU to make eyebrows? I've been looking around and there seem not to be any.

It would be really helpful