Quote - A question for Keith:  If a person were to learn how to do these things you mention would you be willing to beta test their products?

Depends on the product, but sure, and I know I'm not the only one.  Beta testing, in this case, would simply be to see if the masking and such looks okay.  The texture itself (seams matching, whether it looks good, mediocre, or crappy) isn't the issue, because there's absolutely no difference in that case from the standard texture map people put out.

And this isn't an example of not putting my money where my mouth is (well, metaphorically, anyway).  This image uses a mask to isolate the face texture and bump from the rest of the skin, which is a procedural.  The face texture map itself is unchanged: it's the same one I bought and downloaded, no difference at all from what the original creator produced.  If I want a different facial texture (say for a different character), all I do is change the texture map in question without any alteration.  If I want to change the "robotic" texture, I can do that as well without worrying about the human skin component.  If I want to change the transition from skin to robot,  (say I want to get rid of the peaks on the cheek and have a straight line from temple to chin), all I have to do is change the mask and not touch anything else.

While the shader I used for this is a bit more complicated than what I was talking about earlier (it's on my home computer, while I'm at work, so no screen shot, sorry), it's that way because the mask is not only controlling the diffuse texture, it's controlling the bump map, glossiness, reflection and displacement.  If it was just a simple image overlay, it would be much easier.

In fact, for some things like eyebrows, you don't even need the overlay texture map:  the mask in combination with the skin texture and simple colour would give you, say, black eyebrows using a simple colour.  or white, or blonde, or red, or bright fuschia.

It's such an incredibly powerful and useful method of working with textures that I'm at a loss why people don't take advantage of it more.  The only thing I can figure is that people are afraid of the material room, and/or think other people are afraid of the material room, and/or are just too lazy to do it.