Quote - dburdick,

Thanks for the continued help on this. You may be right, it may just be that I am new to Vue and was more use to the way Poser did things. Perhaps the lighting you state is better in that image of Vue over Poser. I am still learning many things on Vue and that is why this helps so I can understand the lighting and looks more.

I will try to post some links later today as well, but I wanted you to know that your one link is almost exactly what I am looking for in Vue for skin realism. This is the one you did I am referring to:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1603268

If I could replicate this look in Vue for my imports I would be quite happy. Do you think that one is well done? Reason I ask is you said some look fake, but this one looks real good to me and about the best I can maybe refer to. Basically, I just need to fine tune this to show a scene with a V4 figure like this in the background, say a beach or something so there are 2 render versions of it: 1 that is the FULL scene and the 2nd that is a close up of the V4 model(s). The link above is really what I am after for most of my scenes. If you could help by letting me know some settings for SkinVue 7 and other tips to achieve this it would help a lot. Do you think I would need to adjust the lighting in the scene if I want to do 2 renders like mentioned above, one that is the full scene and the other a closeup render focused on the character(s)?

Thanks again for all the help and others too, I am more optimistic it will work out now for me as I continue to learn about achieving this realism.

Hi Jeff,

Here is a link to screen grab showing the setup for the SkinVue Bombshell character render you liked:

http://www.skinvue.net/Vue7/PoserBombshellSettings.jpg

A couple of things:

1. This one uses the SkinVue GIBlack atmosphere with a bit more ambient boost added in and more uniform ambient light.

2. The SkinVue settings are just the default ones with the bumps turned down a bit and a little less skin specular.

3.  The lighting setup adds 3 low-power point lights:

• a distant point light to a bit more light to the overall character and to bring out the skin specs
• a closeup point light to light the eyes and create the eye speculars
• a closeup point light to light the necklace

4. Also, notice the Post Rendering options where I toned down the saturation and gamma, and increased the gain a bit.

This is a pretty standard setup for me when doing straight up quasi photo-real type renders in Vue.  Normally, I prefer more dramatic pin-up or edge-lit type character renders, but to each his own.