Quote -
I disagree. "A good skin shader" is one that looks good under standard lighting and rendering and then goes on to look exceptional under whatever advances the maker has seen fit to incorporate. If it looks like crap when placed with other things (that all look fine together) there is a problem. At least, this is my view as the customer.

unfortunately, most props have materials that look bad (imho) under standard lighting, and something with an accurate shader looks good.  that's the problem.  having GC is a good start, but if the prop creator hasn't done anything with the specular or diffuse, it's still going to have problems because the diffuse is at 1.0 (default) and the specular is at 1.0 (iirc, default). that's simply not physically accurate.  then there are the props that just have the texture plugged into the specular channel.   expecting people to cripple their product to match someone else's mistakes doesn't make sense.  you just can't guess at how someone else is going to make mistakes or where they're going to cut corners.

pjz99 - i have to disagree about your images not matching the promos being a bad sign.  because i don't think every user is on par with every merchant when it comes to lighting and render settings.  and sometimes, you can't package the lights you use.  personally, i use bagginsbill's inverse square falloff material on any indoor light.  most of my materials have some bagginsbill tricks in them.  so i couldn't distribute them, let alone sell them.  and, imho, when i use spots without inverse square falloff, it looks like butt.  lots of people start with sets they bought and adjust them significantly.  again, not something they could distribute. 

just because tons of people can't light Stonemason's products well doesn't mean there's anything wrong with his products.  some customers have more money than skill, and i think it's great that even a newbie has access to high quality items.  but i've seen lots of low quality renders of high quality stuff.

not that i think there isn't a problem with this product, or with saying something when you do have a problem with commercial products.