I don't think there's any fighting going on, so pointing out that you're not trying to start a fight seems unnecessary.
 
I'm trying to understand your point, or to convince you that your perception of VSS is making it more complicated than it actually is.

For example:

Quote - With Perfect Skin, I can generate a multitude of various effects almost effortlessly by simplyworking sliders.

Yes, and with VSS you can generate a multitude of various effects by simply editing parameters. If the mat room had sliders, then you could use sliders to alter those parameters. But leaving aside the widget, why do you perceive the VSS parameters as being unable to easily produce a multitude of effects, or unable to produce a more realistic skin?

I brought up the nylon and eggs because you said "I can't figure out how to do anything with it other than what BB set it up to do". I thought by that you meant how to do effects that I did not include a way to do. This implies that you do know how to do effects that D3D did not include a way to do. Thus, I made some examples of things that neither offers an easy way to do at the moment. Things that could be added, if one understands the math, but otherwise if there's no slider to do some effect, then the presence of sliders doesn't make that any easier.

If adding new effects is difficult either way, then you must not be actually talking about adding new effects. Rather, you must be simply talking about how to produce variations of basic, somewhat realistic skin shaders.

Both VSS and D3D PS provide ways to make skin look more real, and to alter the shader in various obvious ways to create many variations from the same texture set. But in both cases, you are unable to make it do anything other than what the authors set them up to do, right? You can't add any other effects besides the effects that are built in. Sliders impact how you change a parameter, not what the parameters are capable of. So while I understand that sliders are perhaps more convenient, they're not actually helping with the problem of not knowing how to add a new effect, one that was not set up by me in the first place.

Meanwhile, GC is simple. The complications have nothing to do with GC. You turn it on.

The complications arise because of the exact reasons johnpf stated above. There is a big pile of shaders and light sets in the Poserverse that represent other ways to compensate for monitor gamma. Here's the solution - don't use those. Don't use old light sets made for Poser 5. Don't use fancy shaders that make the materials respond to light in non-linear ways. With GC, simple shaders work great for most things. Stop using the goofy shaders that Daz provides. Use simple ones.

Now it may be that applying a simple shader to a figure is a lot of work, and you need a tool to help with that. Guess what - that's VSS. VSS doesn't just apply my fancy complicated skin shader. It can apply simple ones, too.

I understand that setting it up is more than a minute's work. But the alternative is to go through dozens (perhaps hundreds) of individual materials, tediously loading simpler non-compensating shaders, and then loading all those texture maps into them, zone, by zone. That could take days. But I can do it in seconds with VSS.

This, by the way, is one of the reasons that GC is only part of Poser "PRO". Casual amateurs who don't want to spend a lot of time learning why things work (or don't work) and learning to use tools to avoid a boatload of manual clicking  - well they just never find render GC to be that useful. So why supply it? SM decided not to.

If the Poser world began today, then unlearning the wrong ways to do things would not be a task at all. The linear workflow would be your starting premise.

The only reason it seems tedious and complicated is because you're not making your own content, but rather are trying to use 10 years of content developed with the wrong assumptions. If every piece of content and every light set was made for the simpler regime offered by render GC, then you'd not perceive the use of render GC as being complicated at all.

This is why I find it incredibly refreshing. I make my own lights and shaders. I prefer to make simple ones when I can. Render GC makes it possible to use simple 2-node shaders on 90% of the stuff I have to edit. For the remainder (figures) I have VSS, which is a one-click solution.

So render GC makes my workflow much, much simpler. The only time I have a problem is when I try to use some prop that has goofy shaders on it. Then I have to rework them. Most hard (non organic) things work great with a color map, a bump map, and that's it.

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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)