I'm referring to the area just under the breast and between the legs.

How does one prevent this? The effect is not very realistic.

Check your material room.

First guess is something is connected to the ambient.

Second guess si you used an older texture/mat room setup and rendered it in PP2012 with IDL and SSS without adapting it.
Solutions?
Remove whatever is connected to the ambient.

Second : adapt your mat room settings for this older texture/mat room nodes.

Show a screengrab of the body mat room settings and we can tell you more..

FastScatter has always caused trouble. It's a really old fake that has no place in a renderer attempting to do realistic lighting.

FastScatter and the Translucence channel are pretty much self-lit.

Get rid of that.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2242849&user_id=275009&np&np

@BB I do not challenge your expertise in this area, I am very aware of your reputation and work, but I dont think this looks to bad!

The image you linked to was done in Poser 7, which doesn't have SSS or IDL or Gamma Correction. You might well have used them then.

The things BB told you not to use in PP2012 still apply.

Again not arguing with anyone, was just trying to show good results can be obtained with fastscatter and a map in the translucence channel.

This approach however seems to have difficulties with Indirect lighting and Poser 2012

material room strategies are a total new game in PP12.   unneccessary overhead if you tick on sss, imo

I use P9 and I'm not sure it is related to SSS at all.
I've noticed the same effect in renders that where either night- or indoor- scenes. I rendered some of them with SSS or without it and it had no effect on the glow at all.

The effect was most obvious in a tomb scene. I used BB's hemisphere with one infinite light and IDL. The M4s (some with the default skin) where in a big room which had only one door and a small opening in the ceiling.
Everywhere two limbs (nearly) touched each other I got this strange orange glow - the armpits were most spectacular.

My first idea was, that it had something to do with AO - but I checked every material in the scene. None had the AO-node. Neither did the light.

I don't get it.... Why don't you just take BB's advice instead of fiddling around? Use the proper PP2012 scatter nodes and get rid of the old workarounds like Fastscatter (which was invented to deal with the fact that Poser didn't have scatter). I NEVER see this effect, and I render with IDL all the time. But I don't use Fastscatter (and only rarely use Translucence).

I arrived at this through experimentation of 100's of renders and different settings.

I was approaching the problem empirically. Making changes and seeing what looked best.

I enjoy experimenting with material setups.

I'll put my textures up against anyone's, proof's in the pudding

Hmm . . .  I've had issues with "glow" like this too.  I deal with it by shutting off "light emitter" for each of the offending body parts.  I don't know where "fast scatter" is, nor do I know what to do about the translucence channel.

Can someone please enlighten me?

Unchecking emitter did the trick.

You ask about the translucence channel (see the above screenshot of mat room), I use a somewhat unorthadox method of placing a top layer map in the diffuse channel @60% and a second off color layer in the translucence channel @ 40%, I think it gives a much more realistic skin tone across a wide range of lighting setups.

Render is with emitter unchecked, SSS and IDL run with HDRVFX Pond AO

I must say, I find this whole emitter setting quite confusing. I always thought that when you set the ambient value and color, the object would emit light. Does it mean that when you uncheck the emitting, it won't?

I can't try this out myself because I'm on vacation and I don't have PP2012 on my laptop.

Sure. And now you have no IDL there.

If you like your results, that's fine. But you can get them in P7.

bopper, the terminology is confusing because there are two uses. When we speak of "Light emitters" we usually mean something that is generating light from within, i.e. a prop with Ambient turned on. The "Light Emitter" setting on the Properties tab means something else, viz, that the item is included in IDL calculations so that it reflects light.

Okay, so I was right about the confusing part.

Quote - bopper, the terminology is confusing because there are two uses. When we speak of "Light emitters" we usually mean something that is generating light from within, i.e. a prop with Ambient turned on. The "Light Emitter" setting on the Properties tab means something else, viz, that the item is included in IDL calculations so that it reflects light.

This is the maddening thing, though.  If body parts are really close together, the light bounces around unrealistically and it looks like they're glowing.  It's vexing when you've got characters holding hands, or fingers really close to a body part.

No, no, and no. That glow does not happen if you get rid of the old-fashioned shaders.

I NEVER get that glow thing happening, and there are a lot of other folks who don't either.

All of my characters have been "converted" to the new shaders so I could take advantage of IDL and Gamma Correction.  (BB walked me through the process, personally!) Deny all you like. This still happens in my renders all the time.

Sorry to hear. But there clearly is some difference somewhere, or everyone would have the same problem, which is not the case. Have you ever tried to troubleshoot by posting renders and settings?

I've asked the question before and didn't get a straight answer.  When I figure out that I can turn off "light emitter" for the offending body parts, I simply started doing that.

I don't know why my skin shaders would be any different from anyone else's, given that I'm now using the same script to generate them.  If someone wants to walk through the process with me, I'm not averse to learning something new.

:)

I guess it depends if you're happy with the results. But if you turn off "light emitter," you're not doing something neutral; you're removing that item from contributing to global illumination. I.e. it's not contributing to IDL. Myself, I would only look at that as a bandaid to fix a short term problem, not as a long term solution.