Dale B - thanks for the suggestions but I have to say, I have experiemented a lot with Vue and dropping the lighting makes things an awful lot worse. Even with Radiosity, the less light you have the more 'plastic' the skin looks. I have to compensate by turning the lighting intensity up. I believe Vue4 pro (and hence Infinite) have the ability for a light source to affect a particular object without affecting anything else so that may help a bit (ie the uniform in the picture above wouldn't be so bright).
Again, I'd definately be interested in seeing any Vue5 stuff that looks good straight out of the box when rendering skin. There are some realistic renders in the gallery but they definately look like they have had a lot of Postwork done (Postwork is not much use if you are trying to animate a scene)
Wasn't sure what you meant about the inverse ambient lighting -could you explain that a bit more?
Cheers