Quote - Um, when I wired the diffuse_color into color_pow (as your illustration suggests) my previews were quite scary - looked like bump-map and specular map were struggling for dominance over the skin, and neither was winning. However, when I wired diffuse_color into color_map (as bagginsbill suggests in the post following this one) it worked fine. I wasn't all that worried about a preview, but I was getting a bit over seeing a plastic mannequin staring back at me... besides, it's harder to pose a character when the skin texture colour isn't there to help reinforce the look.

Hi Robynsveil - sorry, I don't seem to be getting updates on this thread. You're quite right... I chose that node to plug into diffuse simply because it was the one that was already plugged into alternate diffuse. The funny thing is, it worked okay for the material I was using at the time, so I just assumed that was the right thing to do. Wrong! It didn't work on the next material I used, or any other material since then... but plugging in the colour_map works fine every time.

Izi

by the way, I love the renders you are posting in this thread...

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)