But Ted, in the 1st post the scene did have lights, and the dome does have an .hdr "attached" to it. What you see as the background is actually a "stage prop" w/o textures applied.

Now I totally get you on being able to follow/seperate what's going on between the color and normal map (as you guys can see I use the color map w/ a hsv node to remove the color and set the color map to a bw image for a bump map), but as the creator I know that the image is not showing right...

The red veins are cracks/recesses in the skin, and "should" show as such, but I'm not getting anything like that visually. After fixing the materials a bit however, I do see that the bump map is having some effect, and that's good...

Sam, when I get the normals working I will take your advice and apply it for the displacement.

Of course, this could all be for nothing, maybe I have a misconception of what I "should" be seeing in the 1st place =/

Anyways, I have added a texture to the stage prop and added BB's vss outdoor "field" light preset... Still no cracks as expected...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..