I've been working on this a little more as I have had time & suggestions. The original thread (with 1st pictures) can be found here: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1320828 What I changed since the old picture: Iris texture is now taken from a photo on Image After (free texture reference site) Added shine/moist look around cheek/eye junction Added slightly more veining around the eyes Added slight bluish tint to lower eyelids to mimic the thinner skin of the eyelids Raised contrast on the face bump map I thought about adding more "imperfections" to make it look more real as a whole, but I'm trying to get this to be a base texture for future alteration. Suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Looks good so far. I often share this with people: Don't make light textures. Poser lights are dark by default so people make light textures that can turn grey under lights. Instead make darker skin tones and use brighter lights. Your texture looks really good but under "day"lights the skin will turn really white. Just my experience. Just tinted this in PS to show you what i mean. Just an idea.

That's true, Anton. But I really really like lighter skin textures. Most of them are too dark and orangy for my taste. I'd rather have the choice to darken it myself.

It's surprisingly easy to turn a dark, orange-looking skin texture into very pale skin, or even goth. Netherworks showed me how to do it when he was testing something. Typically, ambient is set to black under the skin (0 RGB). Set it just a touch lighter than black and add a very small amount of blue. You'll see a major difference and using ambient really brings out the details in the texture. Real skin is translucent -- you can see through it, to a certain degree. Adding a little ambient underneath a skin texture emulates that nicely. And then if you want to do a render in some harsh white or daylight, setting the ambient back to black will make that darker texture look good and keep the image from appearing overexposed. But, if the texture itself is very white, this cant be done. And setting the underlying object color to a darker tone doesnt have the same effect.

I'll post an example. Err... Naked people. Fair warning.

The above is a single render, using relatively medium lighting. The girls are all wearing the same texture. The only difference is the ambient underneath the skin. If the lighting were brighter, like say, DAZ Global #1, the girl in the middle would look like the girl on the left, and the girl on the left would look like the girl on the right. The poor girl on the right would wash out in overexposure. Under default Poser lighting, the girl on the right looks like the girl on the left.

Why do I feel like I just played a shell game?

LOL Great advice! Thanks and I'll make use of it. But I really really like the color in the top one.

Good advice, Anton, thanks. Now I know why my first body texture looked washed out in bright lighting.

When you say to add ambient 'under the skin,' what do you mean??

If youre a P5 user, I honestly dont know. I gave up on P5 before I learned how to use the Material nodes. But, Im sure somebody could help.

In Poser 4/PP, under the Render menu, select Materials. Make sure the Object pull-down selection is your character Figure (usually Figure 1). Over on the Material pull down, youre going to be selecting all the materials that have anything to do with flesh, and changing the Ambient Color, one material at a time. So, for the modified Steph in the render I showed, youd be doing this for SkinHead, Lacrimal, Lips, Nipples and SkinBody, at least. I also include the nostrils, tongue, InnerMouth and both the Toenails and Fingernails. After all, nails are semi-transparent and there is flesh under them.

For each of the above materials, the Ambient Color will probably be set to black. If you click the Ambient Color button you should see a palette, similar to palettes in paint programs. The black color will be seen as Red 0, Green 0, and Blue 0. In the render above, the girl in the center was unchanged she has an Ambient Color of black. For the girl on the left:

Red 33
Green 33
Blue 48

Girl on the right:

Red 53
Green 53
Blue 79

You may need to play with those numbers a little to get want you want, because each texture is not the same. After youve added a little Ambient Color like this, your character will appear to be glowing slightly if you have no lights in the scene. Its okay. They wont be glowing in the render.

As far as advice about the original texture, I agree with Anton. Unless totally going for goth, I'd darken it a little and add some pink/red. It's hard to see the detail right now because the lighting is dark. But, the texture is too pale to look good under bright light. Darken it up a bit, then play with the ambient if you want pale skin. The detail will jump right out of the texture. You'll suddenly see freckles and veins that previously weren't there.

Bookmarking. Great tip. :)

That's fascinating--thank you for the explanation :)

just a few tips:

--skin is never a flat color. You have a basic skin tone and then you also have undertones. from person to person undertones can be pinkish, yellowish, greenish, whatever, its all very faint. You will also have different tone colors on diff areas, i.e. under the eyes, temples, chins, etc. so its always a good idea to use a bunch of diff colors.you can make light textures, you just cant make them flat and pale or your character will reflect the same and lack realism.

--iris could use a bit of detail and a color adjustment for realism.

--her lips look way cracked, and the lines are a bit crooked.

-- lower the bump map settings, i think its up just a bit to high for this.

In the attached pic (mirrored so you can see better) all i did was add in a few extra tones, and darken it up just a little bit. this way you can still have a light toned texture without it looking flat and pale. Defined the lips and tweaked the iris a bit. Its nothing drastic, not a whole lot of work, but it makes all the difference in the world. On the texture paint on some big splotches of ruddy colors, bluey-purply-gray under eyes maybe too, and gaussian blur em big time. Try playin around with layer modes then to get the look and oppacity you want. the point is just not to have an even color.

there is nothing even about human skin.

If you can, keep poser open while you are texturing so you can go back and forth between the two. sometimes colors will look way drastic and bold on the texture, but they render beautifully, so its good to always double check. just dont be afraid of color ;)

hope that helped some,
-Rio