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BREAKING NEWS - LOCAL BLOGGER MAKES WORLD'S SLUTTIEST MEDIC EVEN MORE SLUTTY

So, my favorite thing about faceposing is working with the eyebrows. (I have just now won the award for Most Obvious Statement Of The Year.)

In order to understand how I made Ludwig more slutty, we have to talk about what his eyebrows are capable of - and what they aren't. (!)

Or rather... weren't. (!!!)

There are a few different basic shapes and configurations that eyebrows can be in. The really important aspects of the eyebrow are as follows:

the inner brow (the part closest to the nose)

the outer brow (the part furthest away from the nose)

the distance between the eye and eyebrow

the shape of the arch the eyebrow is forming

In the following examples, I've illustrated the primary configurations and what emotions they can be used to convey. Of course, there are MANY more emotions than what I list here, and the eyebrows can take on much more nuanced shapes than these extremes. But these should give you an idea of the point I'm making:

There's something very important to note here: Having the inner brows pointed up is something you can only do with a very specific configuration of TWO other sliders at the same time. And that configuration forces the entire eyebrow to pull way upward, far above the eye.

This means that there is a very important capability that we simply don't have here...

This bothered me. This bothered me really bad for a long time. There's a whole additional range of expressions that are accessible if you're able to do this 'whole brow pushed down, inner brow pointed up' thing.

(Insert obligatory DreamWorks Face™ joke here, but it's great for more than just those faces!)

If I was still just using SFM, it would have been impossible for me to do what I did today.

I harnessed the power of Shape Keys in Blender... and I gave Ludwig this heretofore unreachable eyebrow configuration.

This image doesn't have these new shape keys applied yet:

It's not bad, right? But it feels like it could use more.

WELP...

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: HORNY JAIL

Here are a few other expressions that can be achieved only through the power of the Smarm Brow sliders:

There's still a little bit of tweaking to be done to make the new sliders play well with all of the other brow sliders. And because the model and the scripting that powers it is so complex, I'm almost certainly going to run into some roadblocks while I figure out how to really make this a permanent part of the base file.

But the concept is definitely there, it works, and you better believe I'm going to be making use of it... a LOT!

Oh... hey, by the way, remember up in the sketches when I listed a 'secret third thing' in the emotions...?

YEAH--