VSS is not any of what you think it is. VSS is a tool for applying shader templates to props and figures as a group, without you having to apply them one by one. When it applies a template, it examines the target to see what images are used for color, bump, etc and inserts them in the correct places of the template. It can manage applying different templates to different materials, such as eye whites, teeth, skin, walls, windows, doors, floors, etc.

VSS comes with some shader templates for human figures at the moment, and it is these shaders that people refer to as VSS. They are not. VSS is a Python script for automatically populating (copying) shaders from a control prop containing templates onto actual figures and props that are part of a scene.

After the copying is done, it has nothing whatsoever to do with lighting, shading, or rendering. Of course, the copied shaders are doing the shading.

Now people obviously associate the skin shader I provided with VSS as being VSS, but they are not the same thing. That's like thinking that Alyson and Ryan are Poser 8, and that Sydney and Simon are Poser 7. They are not Poser, they are Poser content used in Poser and come with Poser. SImilarly, the skin template is not VSS, it is VSS content used with VSS. You can make and use your own shader templates as well. They are actually ordinary Poser materials with a few conventions for representing stuff that won't be known until a target figure or prop is being configured by VSS.

Several characters are or will shortly appear with my skin shader on them. Users do not need VSS to use those characters, as the outcome of the use of VSS is standard Poser materials.

Now the reason that my shaders are more realistic doesn't have a lot to do with skin - it has to do with just basic proper management of light as it reflects off materials and as the result is properly displayed on a computer image. That means gamma correction and using a Blinn node for specular and setting up a good bump map if there isn't one and a couple other small things, all of which you could do yourself and pay no money for. But I've assembled my bag of tricks into these pre-built template shaders for all to use with one click.

Note also that much of the complexity of these shaders is actually not necessary. The reason there are so many nodes is because I've captured all my knowledge of how to adjust several parameters at once to create a realistic effect, expressed not as those individual parameters but rather in terms that an artist thinks. For example, want more shine? Increase the "Shine" parameter. That actually alters a bunch of other parameters. I used to try explaining how all those parameters should be altered in synchrony, but I find it better to just put myself in the shader and leave the artists free of the math and parameter details.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)