Bill, you have no idea how delighted your post made me! Thank you for your validating words.

In past posts, you made a point about having a collection of math formulas - well, that's how I remember it, anyway - to use as a basis for the creation of realistic materials. In the light of what I've been able to assimilate so far, this seems to be the next step for me... that, and a working familiarity of the behaviour of Poser nodes. My impression is that skin shaders are by nature of the material (skin) much more complex than, say, non-organic materials such as gems. However, looking at the leather shader of yours and that silk shader of Stefan Leng makes me realise I have a lot to find out about the properties and behaviour of nodes in order to make appropriate selections in order to get the effect I want. Oh, and math. Yep. Made a collection of math functions you introduced in previous pages... great for checking the validity of a shader and the maths behind it.

After all, you did give me the ingredients for this shader, Bill. I looked at your PR2 shader and your earlier post and suddenly that mess of nodes kinda all went into their functional corners. I saw what you'd done (even though you'd done it manually in the mat room), and to some degree was able to reproduce it in a Matmatic script. Most importantly, NOW I can use that shader with an understanding of what it's doing, because I've finally got a glimmer of understanding about the maths behind it.

Oh, and yes, I did use VSS to distribute the shader to the different material zones... never ceased to amaze me, that tool!

If nothing else has come of this - well, got the shader I wanted, but anyway - I now share your enthusiasm for using natures laws when creating materials.

Thank you so much for your patience and the time you've spent on this, Bill!!!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks