Ok theres a thread in the commons over at DAZ  about V4's lack of transmapped brows.

Here http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=49350&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

For some reason they got it into their heads that most people dont use or care about transmapped brows (or pubic hair) so they left them off of V4. This is wrong I and quite a few others want them because  for one thing I got used to  using them and for another its easier on the texture creators wether they know it or not. NOW they have to make an option for all different color of brows so people can match their hair . (think about this texture creators part of it is your fault for painting brows on almost every damned V3 texture ever made I know some  don't do that and those are the best textures of all.) So since  everyone was putting brows and pubic hair on their textures they left off the transmaps because they thought no one gave a damn about them.

    So if you  want transmaps on V4 go tell them knowing the way things go  it won't do any good but then again this is DAZ we are talking about  so you never can tell.

(this is just  partially for curiosity because I have a hard time believing that the people who like the transmaps are a minority.)

I think it's more that we are just used to transmaps.  My character has the eyebrows on the texture, but I'm going to play around with the masking method that Gareee mentioned and may do an update to provide a browless texture option with eyebrow overlays worked into the materials.
Technology has advanced to a point where we can do more realistic options with different methods. It's just a little scary to step away from what we already know.

You can complain all you want, but if they added transmapped brows to the mesh, it would break every single headmorph already created for her. Hundereds and hundereds created in months and months of work, not even counting the various morph packs that haven't even been released yet.

And the consensus was NOT if people care or don't care about the feature.. it's if the resources available and the resources required for them are the best use of system resources, which they are not.

If they added them right this minute, you MIGHT see all the headmorphs already done recreated for her 3 months from now, and all that work would be JUST to recreate what's already been done. And that's assuming the artists who've already done that work would even want to attempt to do all that work over again.

Yep, Momcat. Change for change's sake is BAD. Change to improve upon things is GOOD.

I'd really like to see texture product all come with node setup makeup and brow options. Then you could even mix n match say, your makeup textures on top of another texture artist's skin textures.

Once you learn how it's done, it's pretty easy to impliment, and once there are a pile of products in the store that use the proper method, people will embrace the advancement.

Just like things like Dynamic hair, Mat poses, Mor poses, erc tech and easypose tech, new things add more to learn, but add so much more to the utility we all love.

Thing Im trying to get at is how the hell am I supposed to get 3d brows(look at your own they arent flush with your forehead) when they are painted in the damned texture, at least with the transmap  I could have a camera view looking up or down and see the characters brows now I can't. Is there some  way to get a proper bump or displacement without affecting the rest of the head? and what if I don't want brown? I know some blonds have brown eyebrows but what if I want my character to have blond brows or red or even green for that matter? I really dont think the system resources is that much of an issue unless you are running minimum required for poser I happen to have a more powerful system that can handle pretty much anything I can throw at it, so the little bit of system resources needed for transmaped brows wouldnt bother me a bit.

If you run a wet shader on V4's skin, guess what will happen those painted on eyebrows? They will be just as glossy as the skin! I don't think people would like that look unless they are into that grandma's penciled-on shiny eyebrow look. :P So unless some shader guru comes up with a quick fix soon this is a problem, and people are right to point it out and ask for a solution. The fact that DAZ already knew this was a contentious issue and didn't offer a solution is beyond me. If they want to save on file size then make brows an option. I don't buy the argument about morphs, there are ways to do it. Hell, even Wardrobe Wizard could fix the brows to fit various head morphs if it were programed for V4's head. bB

12/8/06

I am waiting to see whether other issues with V4 are corrected, but this is not one of the things that would stop me from buying, because I can fix it myself, if I need to. Gareee pointed us to the turotial that makes a work around possible.

I had no trouble removing photo realistic eyebrows in Paint Shop Pro. I used the clone tool which actually paints another part of the texture over the brow, cloned from nearby skin. The results were remarkably good, even though I am no artist. It took three minutes per eye brow. With practice and my pen tablet, if I must, I can do better.

If folks like Momcat and Gareee pioneer this for us, we will not need to get rid of the painted on eyebrows ourselves. I can change a set of gray eyebrows on a white background to almost any color I want. Well, okay, I can't do just any color because I am color blind, but I can do a lot of them. How about some one making a gold or silver set of eyebrows.

The D/S and Poser community is filled with smart, creative, innovative people. If they start putting eyebrows on textures using nodes, there is no telling what they may provide to alter our textures. If things like tattoos, body/face hair, scars, eyebrows, moles, scull caps, birthmarks, tears, bruises, etc, are no longer painted onto a texture, but included as node add ons, one could learn how to use the nodes for oneself, and mix and match content, greatly expanding creativity.

If one is not good at making something like eyebrows, the old transmaps can be used as a model. They can be colored, sized, cut and pasted, and used (but not sold, they are someone else's work) to make eyebrow textures. I have a dozen old transmaps in my texture directory.

LMK

You can use the Material room blender node to good effect. This example shows how to add a tattoo but it would be the same set up to add eyebrows. 

If you want to change the eyebrow colour either use a texture map or simply set the blender node Input_2 colour directly. (Shown green here for clarity).

With the blending set at 0.5 some of the underlying face texture will be included to give a natural effect.

I'll be glad when DAZ finally get around to properly documenting this sort of thing, rather than leaving it to the rest of us. A few things to add to PhilC's description, though some won't work in P5. 1: I call these things Control Maps rather than Transparency Maps, because they can be used for so much more than just Transparency effects. For instance, if your wet skin is from the specular reflection, you can control that from the same texturemap. Use a math_node, set to Subtract, with value_1 set to 1 and the texture fed into value_2, if you need to invert the black and white. 2: If you have a PNG format texturefile in Poser 6, you can use the alpha channel as a built-in transparency map. Feed the skin texture into the Background input of the eyebrow texture. Though you can't easily get at the alpha channel to provide other effects. 3: PhilC uses a full-size texturemap. You can cut it down to just the area around the eyebrows, and use the Scale and Offset settings on the image_map node to position it at the correct place in UV space. You don't need huge texturemaps just to change lip colour or make a tattoo. You could also provide very high resolution texture areas without hitting Poser's limit on imagefile size. All this is stuff which is a bit of hassle to set up; not something for every user. Once it's in a MAT pose (or a P6 material collection) it's as easy as any other to use. But things like wet skin are going to be awkward; I don't think you can easily automate the rearrangement of node connections that would be needed. Maybe a P6 wacro?

Cool tips - thanks Phil!

I'm sure someone can create conforming eyebrow props that do the same job as the V3 trans brows? One of the merchants has already made a Merkin using that approach...

Just select the eyebrow area with the Poser grouping tool and spawn a prop. Move that prop ever so slightly forward and parent to the head.

2 Minutes tops :)

Dynamic Hair eyebrows? Just another step...

Good idea Phil - I've actually started using the spawn-prop function lately.

Dynamic Eyebrows - heh- does that mean we can start making big wirey politician-style eyebrows? I think you still need a bit of mesh to use as the base for the dynamic hair - so PhilC's suggestion works there too.

Cheers

Thanks, Phil....I am keeping a copy of your screen capture and information! :) 

Well...

There are 3 colors going on here, so I am going to end up having to:

1. edit out the brows on the texture. (Clone / Repair, no matter what it'll suck)
2. transmap / node fiddle new brows onto the texture somehow.
3. Color match those brows to the hair I'm going to use.
4. Do the same with the lashes, tho at least those are still transmapped.

Whereas before I just color matched the brows and hey presto, done.

And you wonder why we are pissed? That's a lot of work, end of debate.

BTW Merchants - don't bother selling any texture which has the brows painted on for either V4 or Sydney. Don't freaking bother because anyone with a brain will not buy it unless there is an option without painted brows. You will now have to provide overlays. If you don't, I can almost guarantee that anyone who does will sell more than those who *don't.

Because if I want to mess around taking off brows from a texture... and I have the skill to do it... Give me one good reason why I should buy any texture at all. If I can take off eyebrows and have a result after where I don't see it's been edited then I can make my own textures.

So basically - I am going to INSIST that any V4 Texture no painted brows / genitals and has brow / genital overlays and node settings for them. Don't like doing that? Tough.

for every person that HATES HATES HATES textures with painted on brows, there are an equal number who PREFER them....it's all about choice...

After all, if it really doesn't match , do a hur to target in your paint program and in about 20 seconds its fixed, or if postwork isn't your thing, all these other folks have provided really creative and interesting options...so the thing is,,,,there are options. 

One reason I don't like transmaps is they look very fake to me in closeup renders.  That and if you get very extreme with eye and brow morphing, then you get issues where they mess up......

I guess I don't understand the venom about something like this...bearing in mind that the vast majority of poser merchants are also artists, there are reasons both practical and creative for what they do.  

I DO KNOW one thing for sure, most people respond better to logic and reason than they do ranting, threats, and general childishness...if i wanted someone to take my wishes into consideration when they were making products, I would not be combatative and hateful...just a thought

Well, that just made me want to rush out and do exactly what you just asked, Silke! How nice of you to ask so politely.

Thank you for that screen capture, Phil.

Quote -

One reason I don't like transmaps is they look very fake to me in closeup renders.  That and if you get very extreme with eye and brow morphing, then you get issues where they mess up......

Exactly. Count me among the folks that hate transmapped brows.

Quote - If you run a wet shader on V4's skin, guess what will happen those painted on eyebrows? They will be just as glossy as the skin!

A good way around that is with specular maps.  I much prefer those to blanket wet shaders because you can use them to control how much specularity you get and where it goes.

I'm hoping P7 gives us back the ability to do partial shaders.  It'd be nice to have a kit that applied different specularity and bump maps without changing the texture map, and apply overlays, like glitter, dirt, blood,  or sand.

 

Quote - I'm hoping P7 gives us back the ability to do partial shaders.  It'd be nice to have a kit that applied different specularity and bump maps without changing the texture map, and apply overlays, like glitter, dirt, blood,  or sand.

 

ooooh that WOULD be nice to play with :)

Have to tell you though artists or not there are some really bad eyebrows out there. They look like they were just a line painted on, and never mind individual hairs. I agree. If there is not also a texture without eyebrows painted on I will not be buying it either. Vendors here may be artists, but that doesn't mean they are all good artists.

wow ..nothing like being hateful to get people to do what you would like......don't know about you all but that ALWAYS makes me want to run and do something nice for some one......NOT! ..catch alot more flies with honey than you can with vinegar my grandma always said......and I am with you all..transmaps can look oooooh so fake...
awesome info Phil, Thank you! and Mom ..Ihope it does too..that would be great!!

Not being hateful here, just look through some of the products out there. I don't buy them either. Actually probably will hold off on using V4 until I see something useful done about this. And you aren't doing anything "nice" as long as you are charging me for it, I don't really consider it a favor.

Oh good.  Glad you're not being hateful.  I do hope you feel the same way when marketplace prices rise to reflect the extra amount of work that will be required to accommodate what is clearly not the prevailing viewpoint.  :-)

OK, some interesting debate in this thread.

Although I was originally a fan of geometry eyebrowse, over time I've realised that there are significant downsides to them, specially with morphs and creating custom characters.  In the end, the rendered quality of painted eyebrows is a little better than geometry eyebrows, so I'm happy!

If you run a wet shader on V4's skin, guess what will happen those painted on eyebrows? 

The solution to this is trivial.  Simply plug a B&W version of the texturemap into the specular channel.

:) thank you BF..LOL... 

great info Face off..:) thank you!
and marque..that post was not directed towards you ..but towards the post that was in a hateful demanding tone.....and its not really about being "nice" but when you state something you don't like about a product, in this case a model that texture artists are not responsible for how it was modeled..those complaints need to go to Daz,.... people usually respond alot better to someone making requests known nicely rather than being hateful and demanding....and vendors are not charging you for anything you have not already looked at, read the readme, looked at the promos and decided to buy..and even then ..for myself, if I had a customer email me and let me know about something they didn't like and I could help in some way ..I am sure I would..as I am sure other vendors would too..as a matter I have had them do it for me..:)

I dunno if anybody has mentioned eyebrow props, like eyelash cr2 files or merkins. thx to phil fr the eyebrow map item. p.s. that facemap reminds me of the villainess in the recent dr. who episode, the one where they went 5 billions of years into the future to see the earth burn up. anyway, the villainess was just a stretched face on a frame. and she tried to burn everybody up, just prior to beaming off the space platform.

Great tips Phil! In the second setup you posted, how would you then add a bump map to the brows to make them look more realisitic? Anyone have any ideas or can you post the setup image like Phil did? I have a bump on the face texture without the brows...but after adding the brows like Phil did, there is no bump map on them. Still a bit lost in the nodes. ;-)

IIRC, Adzan said over at DAZ that he is working on a brow prop.  Please be nice to him.  He's awesome, and he tends to give his hard work away free.

Great ideas face_off. :-)

One could also put some displacement in the brow area to get a not-flat look, couldn't they?

edit: Welcome, Neesa. :-)

The overlay option with Blender is a good idea. If someone did a collection of really, really good brow overlays and one-click applications of those Materials, that would solve so many things and be very useful to many people too!!! It doesn't have to be a flat color in the overlay either, there could be some creative texture fills for those brows too. But this would be a Poser and Vue only solution I think. A new transmap geometry for V4 would work for all applications, Bryce, Carrara, C4D, etc. I am picky about brows, always have been. They are so important for character creation. I even have a short-hand of the basic brow shapes and what type of symbolism goes with each. And the more I think about it, the more I really, really, want real hair brows. I think it can be done. I'm already thinking about how such a thing could work. For instance, they could include morphs for fitting them on various face morphs and expressions. Real brows would be excellent for close-up renders. (For medium and long shots, switch back to transmap/overlays and painted on brows.) Pictured is a SWEET screen cap of Cloud (or is it Sephiroth?) from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. (Click on the image to enlarge and see all the kickass coolness of real hair) bB

Quote - IIRC, Adzan said over at DAZ that he is working on a brow prop.  Please be nice to him.  He's awesome, and he tends to give his hard work away free.

Great ideas face_off. :-)

One could also put some displacement in the brow area to get a not-flat look, couldn't they?

edit: Welcome, Neesa. :-)

AAMOF, one could put a very detailed displacement map in the brow area to get a non flat look.

If I could get one good mask for V4's eyebrows, I'd very happily use that.  I don't MIND the painted on eyebrows in some cases but I don't want all my black haired girls to have red eyebrows.  Masks are awesome and have so many uses.  Using a mask in the material settings allowed me to do this (shout out to OrcaDesignStudios for this.  I used his initial set up and learned a LOT from it).

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

then, like Momcat said, get a nicely detailed displacement map for the brows and it won't look painted on.

Thank you so much for the images, Phil! That helps a lot - I learn visually much easier than through reading.

And face-off too, thanks for the tip.

For adding a brow bump in addition to an already made face bump map, could you use the blender node again and set it up similar to the diffuse maps? But with the bump channel? 

Quote - AAMOF, one could put a very detailed displacement map in the brow area to get a non flat look.

 

Excellent.  That could be a fun thing to try.  :-)

Has anyone tried all these tricks yet: blender over brow, displacement brow, and specular knockout for brow? I am wondering if Poser can render displacement on the brow because awhile back there was great deal of talk about the limits of Poser's ability to handle displacement, something like 8 bit not 16 bit, but I could be remembering it wrong. Also does Poser 7 have improved handling of displacement? bB

The Blender method by Phil works great for putting the brows on where you want them and in what color. However, I haven't figured out how to do the displacement or bump yet to make them look more real. I'm hoping someone can walk us through it.

Doing displacement is easy.  Just plug the same mask into the displacement channel and set  at .003 or something like that.  Violia.  You may want to play some to fine tune it.

REMEMBER: In displacement maps--it is the OPPOSITE of bump maps! With displacement, white adds altitude, and black subtracts altitude!

Joe, are you sure of that? Now I'm really confused - I thought bump maps also used white for high points and black for low.

And transmaps use black for invisible and white for visible.

And masks? Aren't they white to block out (be invisible) then, in the case of eyebrows - they'd be the color of the eyebrow? Or greytones with color added in the color channel?

I think one of the examples Phil showed had both trans and masks.

I'm getting pretty confused here folks - I wish someone could make a full tutorial from start to finish on the various ways to add eyebrows...

And while I'm at it, Phils method shouls work for makeup also, right? Making it possible to have various makeups to apply without having to have the fully detailed head map each time - just switch makeup maps.

But in that case - how would one apply both an eyebrow mask/map and also a makeup mask? If they both go into the diffuse channel.. it will only accept one link, right?

Sorry to sound so inept - but I am learning so much from all this, I just need a little extra guidance. I'm actually working on something right now that, though not for V4, does involve a character with no eyebrow material zone, so this is coming in very handy. 

If I can get it all to work!

:D  judee

They're not opposites.  As I understand it, the difference is where zero level is.  On a bump map, black is flat, or even with the surface.  White is above the surface.  There is no below the surface.  On a displacement map, 50% gray is even with the surface.  White is above the surface, black is below the surface.  hth. :-)

That makes sense and thanks butterfly_fish for that. I didn't know that. :-)

Welcome. :-)

If you have started your map without eyebrows and then paint on the eyebrows I don't see where it's extra work to have a texture with no eyebrows. Guess I'm confused here.

Marque,
That's fine if you don't care about a photo-realistic texture.  The eyebrows on most high end textures are from photos, and are not painted on.  I don't really think of V4 as "lacking" transmapped eyebrows. I think we are just used to having them on this particular figure.  I certainly don't remember such an uproar over Miki's eyebrows, lol.  Perhaps, rather than debate the whole transmap issue (since changing it at this point would mean recreating every head morph, and this is not bloody likely to happen), we could brainstorm ideas regarding the best way to take advantage of her features, and the technology available to create support content. 

Obviously, people would really like a way to change eyebrow color.
I think that many of the folks responding to this thread have been very helpful and informative about ways to do exactly that.

Regarding the extra work involved:
What consists of extra work is having to create two sets of head maps and MATs instead of one.  If you are including several make-up options, that gets fairly time consuming on a figure that already is far more work to texture than any other Poser figure out there.

What would be optimal, is a way to just change the eyebrows, without having to have a whole new face map.

Butterfly_Fish, thank you!  Now I know why the one I tried to make last night looks like utter garbage, lol.

Very helpful butterfly fish, thanks for explaining that!

And I think many of us are not so much complaining, or asking them to go backwards, but rather trying to find out a usable and not too difficult or time consuming method to be able to add multiple colored eyebrows on any given character.

I would think merchants would be wanting something they could do so that those who purchasse can just click on this or that to change, and not have to themselves go change nodes in the material room.

I don't mind doing the work if others are willing to pay for it - but I can't do what I know how - and someone mentioned somewhere, (can't remember) it would be best if there were a standard way to do it, and not half a dozen different ways.

I think both Poser and Daz Studio should be capable of this - not sure ab out how to then transer to other programs, but at least get these two working as a start.

Like I said before, I'm already learning a lot I didn't know. Very interesting thread!

judee

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2840942

Actually, in Poser black is the base level for displacement. To use it properly requires the use of a maths node so that mid grey becomes the base level so that black indents and white raises properly. A bump map does use mid grey as the base level, so that black gives the illusion of indentation and white gives the illusion of raised surfaces.

The linked thread has examples by diolma showing this, and also in the thread is a link to a thread showing the math node requirements for displacement to use mid grey as a base level.

I liked trans-mapped eyebrows personally too.

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