Hey BB, you're not at my disposal so please do everything in your own time.

I can say for sure the 1st image was done using VSS1 generic prop.
If it wasn't, with such a low light my model would have been dark brown like it was yesterday.

I am now experimenting with VSS3:
Not exactly sure of what I am doing (for that I would need an intensive theory course and also to buy me a brain...)
But I m messing around with what you call shader tree - although it still doesnt look like yours:
as you can see I still can't link DIFFUSE COLOR to COLOR MAP, BUMP to BUMP MAP, DIFFUSE VALUE to ALT SPEC, etc