Quote - Detail crop of the skin under my eye. Click for full size. Observe that at this magnification, the skin is not the least bit smooth.

CG renders look fake because we don't have this in the texture. You can't get this kind of resolution in a texture. But I think I can with a procedural driven by a low-res map that tells me where to put different styles of procedural bump on the figure.

We haven't even gottten to that yet, but we will.

Hi Baggins Bill
I posted this link some time ago in your VSS thread and wanted to know it you checked it out.
scroll down to 2005 Technical report pdf on "The Appearance of Human Skin"
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/publications/

Some very interesting stuff about skin in that paper although you probably know most of this from your own research. Anyway you brought up mask maps for fine wrinkle detail etc.

Micro scale as defined in that paper is on a cellular level so you wouldn't see that, but you would notice Meso scale and Macro scale. Meso scale is defined there as fine wrinkes, pores etc. while Macro is regional areas such as face, arms, etc.

 Im thinking maybe a bump map for larger wrinkles such as skin folds..knuckles, palm creases etc. and a procedural bump shader for really fine wrinkle detail and a mask map to control the regional scale of that fine detail.

BTW that skin is looking awesome and fantastic! :)

Cheers,
JB