Hello operaguy! 1) Well nothing is ever final with me. In and of itself, the shader in post 1 works pretty well when it works. However, tuning and tweaking this shader is a pain. I like to be able to change one number and have it produce a single, conceptually simple effect. So for example, to get make this model more or less tanned, you have to change several of these settings. I started down that path when I posted the render #37. And then face_off so nicely critiqued my render and I wanted to address those points. To my mind, his crits should each have a simple obvious knob in the shader. The way it is built right now they don't. So I'm redesigning the whole thing. Unfortunately, the result is about 3 times as many nodes!!! The math isn't complicated, its just that if you want a single knob to alter 5 other settings in non-linear ways, you need a node for each math operator. I wish Poser had a Python shader node and I could just type in expressions like: out = bias(in1.red, in2) + bias(in1.green, 1-in2) + bias(in1.blue, 1-in2) That fairly simple formula requires nine nodes. Bah! When I get the next version suitably tweaked so the obvious controls are independant, I will publish it. It will be a couple weeks though. My "real job" is interfering and I have to go to Stockholm all next week. Meanwhile, all I really did for that pickture was tone down the specular node (I think the value was .15), make it white (which was a mistake), and I made the pink colors in the colorramp more red and changed the zone it affected by reducing the colorramp input. (I think I made it .7) 2) If the nails are not "painted", then yes apply the shader there too. Especially if you are going to back-light the hand or foot, you need it. If the nail is painted, then no. For non-skin material zones, this one doesn't apply at all. It is a very poor workflow to have to edit skintorso, save the mat, then apply to the other 6-7 zones. Then do the same for head zones. Totally bad. I found a "MatClone" python script by Kenneth Mort aka TromNek that helped. It never got past "beta" but I tweaked it to work for me. 3) Well there is always a small increase in render time with each additional node. But it is small. Really small. Nothing compared to changing render settings or going to a higher shadow map size. Remember, the shader for skin is only being evaluated where the renderer "sees" the skin. So if the figure only takes up 20% of your image, this shader only affects 20% of the render time. 4) Absolutely right. It is a huge waste of time to tweak each zone or even to save and load for each zone. But I'm going to make a Python script that I think will come in extremely handy. Not just for my materials, but any materials. The idea is this: Use the script to label certain nodes in a special way. For example, suppose there is a math node that controls the amount of front-side SSS. We change the node from "Math_Function" to "Math_Function[Front-side SSS]". Now the other part of my script would know (because of the bracketed name) that it needs a slider for "Front-side SSS". For a given figure, you would move the slider and it would adjust ALL INSTANCES of this specially labelled node in all the material zones throughout the figure, or even the whole scene if you wanted it. This opens up unbelievable possibilities. For example, you could take any material you got from anywhere (free or pay), mark it up as described above, and then my script would present you a global dialog that could control all the marked-up materials wherever they are in real time. Also, since such parameters can be animated, you could get them to be altered through an animation and easily control these effects from one place. The mind boggles! I don't know why Poser doesn't have such a feature. Seems obvious to me. It's going to take me a while to write it because I don't know TK well. But I do know Python really well. Once this script is available, you wil be able to use it to control really complex materials like mine or face_offs with ease. And nobody will need to do any more coding like face_off had to do. (I've never looked at his scripts - don't have them - but they must be a bitch!) Coding this will take quite a while and if somebody wants to help with it, I'd love that. Well like I said, gotta do some work over the next week. But we'll talk again when I'm back.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)