OK I know the products I am using an examples are phenomenally good and I probably don't have a hope in hell BUT I was wondering how do people get these results on lips - the subtle shine on say the character Rio I have seen here, and Vanessa for V4 over at Daz... I can get a shine but it always always looks like plastic. 

They could be using a specular map , or a combination of nodes to alternate pecular.  Anistropic gives some interesting effects. 

What have you tried to make shine?
I get good results just by adding Glossy shader to Alternate_Specular input.

Blinn can do it too. You have to set it right. The eccentricity should be very low.

Also, you need to have an accurate amount of bump. Lip crevices are much larger than skin crevices, but almost all the texture sets I've seen do not have the correct amount of bump in the lip area. They usually have roughly the same amount everywhere.

Sometimes increasing the bump strength on the lip zone works. Depends on whether the bump map is smooth at the lip edges or not.

Me - I use a lip mask and modulate both the bump and the shine with it.

Don't expect realism if the color map has burned in specular. It will look like a disease instead.

You want some kind of map to give you a gradual falloff at the border of the lip, otherwise it will be razor-sharp and terribly obtrusive.  Here's the map that I use:

http://sites.google.com/site/fleshforge/Home/free-stuff-1/v4-lip-mask-bitmap

Making bump fall off that way is something that never occurred to me but is a great idea, I'm gonna do that.

Quote - You want some kind of map to give you a gradual falloff at the border of the lip, otherwise it will be razor-sharp and terribly obtrusive.  Here's the map that I use:

http://sites.google.com/site/fleshforge/Home/free-stuff-1/v4-lip-mask-bitmap

Making bump fall off that way is something that never occurred to me but is a great idea, I'm gonna do that.

Just to enlarge on Paul's thought, the mask needs to all be within the perimeter of the lip material zone. And then, if you use a shader, it needs to be for the 1_Lip and 1_SkinFace zones.

Quote - Just to enlarge on Paul's thought, the mask needs to all be within the perimeter of the lip material zone.

Just in this case, because the lip polygons are completely joined to the rest of the face's map, it would be okay to ignore the material zone boundary, just you'd need to apply the same map and specularity tricks to the face material as well as the lip.  For other areas that will span a break in the UVMap at a material border, that would be a lot harder (look into a projection painting app).

That looks awesome! Now, it probably isnt the best time to point out I have no idea what any of the nodes do or whatever, I just get hit an miss sometimes and have not really tried nodes.. I mean I have sort of had them explained but HOW do I achieve THAT look? I mean I hate to ask but would someone write me like a tutorial of what to put where? If I knew where to start I would be able to tweak it to my own look. But with this look in that picture, what do i do? Like I said, I hate to ask but Im a real dunce when it comes to this stuff.... 

Just to elaborate though, I know what shaders are, I know they are used to make stuff look real and they are made up of nodes, like the glossy or whatever else is there. I just don't really know what nodes do what, I mean I kind of do, but which nodes would I have to use to get that look and where would I put them? I know you guys who understand this stuff probably will be frustrated at my questions but I would really like to learn :) 

If I have the main texture, ok that just say that is all I have there at the moment, so haven't even changed the default settings from V4 so this picture is what I have, what do I do next?

That's why I included a picture in that download, although I'm sure there are other ways to do it.

 I messed around with a few nodes and all i came up with was this...

I lowered the gloss a bit and its more subtle but still I dont know that it looks right... 

Did you look at the download I offered?  This is one way it could be set up:

 I did look but what are all those plugged into? There are so many nodes... its all so confusing to me. Im sorry I must be annoying you right now and if I am I apologize, just hand me a dunce cap LOL 

First, re-load whatever skin shader setup you had already, because it looks like you have changed some stuff that maybe you'll end up wanting plugged in again.

Unpack that zip file containing the lip mask somewhere you can find it.  RuntimeTexturesDAZCharactersMilWomV4 is where the basic V4 textures are stored, maybe you could put it there - anywhere you know where to look for it, it doesn't matter that much.

Next, look at the PoserSurface root node (the big thing on the left that everything plugs into).
Find Alt_Specular, near the bottom.

Find what is plugged into it, don't unplug anything yet.  Drag that node away from the others so you can keep track of it.  Now that you have it away from the others, go ahead and unplug it from Alt_Specular.

Look at the highlighted stuff.  Those three nodes are things you have to add.
1 Blender node (Math -> Blender)
1 Glossy node (Lighting -> Specular -> Glossy)
1 Image Map node (2D Textures -> Image Map)

In the Image_Map node, click the first line Image_Source and drill for that map you extracted from the zip file earlier.

Plug your Blender node into Alt_Specular on the PoserSurface root node.
Plug whatever you disconnected in the first steps (whatever was originally plugged into Alt_Specular) into the first plug of your Blender node.
Plug your Glossy node into the second plug of your Blender node.
Plug your Image_Map node into the third plug of your Blender node.
Click the number value of the third line in your Blender node and make its value 0.5 (different values can work too, play around with it, you can see in that pic I have it set to 0.5).

Done.

 you are a freakin super star. Thank you SO much for that! You rock m/  By the way what do you mean by "First, re-load whatever skin shader setup you had already, because it looks like you have changed some stuff that maybe you'll end up wanting plugged in again"  I think I only had the original V4 setting in there... 

 

I may not remember correctly - I haven't used that original V4 skin setup for a couple of years now - but I didn't think it was just one glossy node plugged into Alt_Specular.  Can't really go load it and check right now either.  /shrug

> Quote - I may not remember correctly - I haven't used that original V4 skin setup for a couple of years now - but I didn't think it was just one glossy node plugged into Alt_Specular.  Can't really go load it and check right now either.  /shrug

I think it did it! YAY thank you so much for the help i have included a picture