This might be useful: some experiments from when I was working on the Miki skin texture. They are all black to white gradients in the glow channel, so I could quickly see the exact effect I would get. 1) For the Colour channel. Veloute - I know it's not accurate, but with the proper texture maps applied it's not too bad for faking veins and skin tone variation. This eventually became: - Mixer operator (colour channel) - Channel 1: texture mixed with slightly brighter texture with Veloute. - Channel 2: as above, but both textures brighter. - Main blender: Shader Ops Invert Fake Fresnel to push the brighter/paler colours back as if the colour is fading away into the distance. If you haven't got Veloute try Cellular and/or Fractal Noise - they should get the job done. I think you've got to put something extra into the colour channel of a texture as well as every where else. It gives the lights in your scene something extra to play with and adds to the final image. 2) For the Highlight channel. Shader Ops Fake Fresnel. 3) For the Highlight channel. Environment/Slope shaders 2 & 3 - might not be accurate, but if they look right in the final image then who cares. Overlay is useful here - put something like Environment in the first overlay channel and some fractal noise in the second. Then adjust the noise until you're happy with the highlight edges. For nomuse - the 'soft glowing highlights' thing, are you talking about sub surface scattering? If you aren't already playing with the Carrara 5 Beta (which has it) then try messing around with stuff in the Glow channel of a texture. Just make sure it's something with a controllable intensity - Shader Ops Brightness might be useful for that.