Quote - Ok the figure I’m using is Carlotta Love V4  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/carlotta-love/94431/

She come with Carlotta Love Default Skin + SSS (Head and Body) – I must say that I really don’t understand exactly what SSS means or what it does, but I did apply to her arm and legs, and to be honest I think the skin had more of a photo realistic look to them when I used the default skin mats.

I will try checking all my lights to see which ones are casting shadows.   My other problem is I don’t want the scene to be to bright; that has always been a problem for me.  I do like lots of dramatic lighting with deep shadows like the ones that make good black & white photos.   

Anyway here below is another in the series featuring her legs. I know getting realism in the dog is out of the question and I can live with that, but the main focal point in the render is her legs anyway.  

If anyone is following this thread please the more feed back the better.

Thanks again

Steel

When using SSS, one thing to keep in mind is that it tends to blow out the details in your texture map. This is a universal issue with SSS, not just in Poser, but moderation in the SSS settings will help a lot.

It's hard to say just exactly what the cause of the loss of "realism" on the skin is. I looked at the renders on the product page you linked to (I like Rhiannon's stuff), and it appears that she has good detail in the skin texture. So my guess here, and it is simply a true WAG, is that your lights are washing out a lot of the detail, and SSS is doing the rest. You might try using the IDL lights that came with the character and the IDL SSS texture set (at least from the product description I surmise that these are all a part of the package) to see what kind of results you get.

In general, the legs/feet in the image look kind of like plastic, almost like a department store manikin (which is perfectly OK if that is the look you want, but not for "photoreal"). The feet would have more wrinkles/folds in the skin, especially on the back of the foot near the heal, where a large protion of the load from supporting the body will force the heal down and forward along the inclined plane of the shoes. There should also be a bit more indication of where the tendons are on the top of the foot. There are other subtle surface imperfections that aren't present that go a long way toward a more photorealistic effect, but the ones I listed are good starting points.

The fur/fuzz in the shoes is great!!! But again, the rest of the shoe looks more like plastic and is lacking detail. The plastic effect can be addressed by reducing highlight/specular a bit. I'm guessing the shoes themselves are probably missing the needed texture/modeling detail to get "photorealism", though it could be a lighting/texture/shader issue too. If you are looking for some great, incredibly detailed shoes for V4, Idler168 over at DAZ is one of my favorites.

With respect to lighting, many of the Poser lights sets are very complicated, and seem to have a lot more going on than what really needs to be there, and often make getting the results I want difficult. I've always had issues with lighting in Poser. For me, and this is really a personal thing, good lighting in Poser has alway been difficult, while lighting in DS, Carrara, Lux, C4D seems quite straight forward. I can't stress enough just how important good lighting is - the most realistic and detailed model, with the most realistic and detailed textures/shaders, will look very much less than realistic with a poor light set up. As others have sugested, IDL is a great way to go for realistic lighting. I wish I could be more help with the lighting, unfortunately I'm simply incompetent with Poser lighting.

I tend to try more for realistic 3D in my renders, rather than photo realism. What I mean by realistic 3D is that the viewer gets the true illusion or feeling of 3D in the image, but the image is typically obviously not a photograph of ..... say .... a real person.  It's simply an image of a 3D figure, possibly even a photograph of a realistic 3D figure(s). I bring this up because achieving true photo realism in any 3D software typically involves having good skills in sculpting and/or texturing (i.e. zBrush), where realistic 3D is much more forgiving and easier to achieve.

As a side note and OT for this thread - Thanks Steeleyes for your comments in my gallery (Vixen Girl is one of my favorites as well)!!

The character/detail morphs for the Bridget WIP render are actually all "dial spins", but they did take many many hours of tweaking to get her looking the way I wanted. The detail in the legs (and other muscles) comes from a combination of the muscle morphs for Genesis, and detail/fitness morphs. There is also some additional enhancement with Flexions enabled (automatic compresion/extension of the muscles when the joints are moved), which gives a very similar effect to the true compression of the calf muscles when someone is wearing pumps. The image titled "Bridget's Got Back" is essentially the same figure, and is a good example of what the calf muscles look like when not compressed, with the feet flat on the floor.

I hope what I've said helps in some way. I'm not the best at realism myself, but I sure do think about it a lot.

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