Yikes. Another realism convert.

You're in for a lot of work.

In a nutshell:

Lighting
Shadows
Shaders
Pose
Expression
Geometry
Context

All of those are important. Get any wrong, and it fails.

Now for realistic skin, you must do something about:

Conservation of energy
Fresnel effect
Subsurface scattering
Gamma correction

First you must learn what those really mean. Then you must learn to apply them in a skin shader.

Search for "realism", "realistic skin", or those phrases above, in posts by face_off or me, here in this forum. As you go farther back in time, you will see me do stuff way wrong, very wrong, slightly wrong, etc., which can be amusing, and can help you avoid reinventing a bad wheel. I pretty much documented everything I tried, showing how it worked better or didn't work better. It is good to understand all the different techniques, though not strictly necessary.

Or you can wait for me to finish my free skin shader system, part of my Versatile Shader System - VSS. If you can't wait, and want to experiment with it, try the preview release of VSS. There is a 23+ page thread on it.

Search the Poser gallery for VSS. (Lots of artists trying it out - let's you see what it does)

VSS thread.

VSS is meant to be a one-click shader solution for any figure. It's not quite that perfect yet.

There is a ton of info in that thread. Please read it before asking questions regarding problems you run into. Most problems have been discusssed one way or another by now. Some do not yet have solutions.

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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)