I noticed a lot of people that go for realism render mannequin figures with dusty, dry skin. Why is this look so popular? The wax and plastic look seems to be popular as well.

Wax/Plastic/Dust/Dry seems to be the most common skin types on renders that shoot for realism.

to me, they usually look pasty.  I would like to see them darker and oiled-up occasionally.

Wax, plastic, dust... all materials that have some properties in common with real human skin.

So understandable that renders of human skin can tend too far towards looking like these materials...

...that's my excuse anyway ;)

We could go the other way..... Crackho skin with oozing meth sores!  Or pizza-face acne!  Or terminal melanoma!  Or yaws!

Quote - We could go the other way..... Crackho skin with oozing meth sores!  Or pizza-face acne!  Or terminal melanoma!  Or yaws!

after the "pimple on her arse" issues I had with the maggy thatch picture I have found that that look doesnt seem too popular. LOL

for some reason no one wants oozing welts. I cant figure out why. I think they add abit of character.:P

Oiled up is always good. I suspect that it is simply because getting it right is very difficult? Though around for a while now, maybe SSS is still new enough that people are still going 'gee whiz!' and haven't learned to go for a more subtle effect i.e. if a little is good … You may similarly see an influx of Vickies sagging and oozing all over the place with the upcoming soft body feature.  The proliferation of people mimicing examples that impressed them as so much better than the old days, but aren't necessarily the best practice. All pure speculation.

When IBL and AO became popular in Poser, there were thousands of renders with absolutely no specularity and no shadows at all.

Prior to that, outdoor scenes with 3 or four suns were popular, for some reason.  :)

  Now, I'm seeing a lot of renders which look weird, since people are using IDL.  I may not be the greatest Poser-er in the world but I do know things cast shadows, rather than some vague, indistinct darker bits here and there, and I do know things - just about everything - has a certain amount of specularity.

I'd like to see how well dark skin holds up with Poser SSS rendering.  I'm tired of the pasty white blue-vien skin too.

Yer, I've noticed that some textures are looking a bit pasty...I have one up in the gallery just like that. I've also noticed that I am getting far better results by applying EZSkin to textures that are non SSS based...usually textures I purchased or created years ago, when the only option was shaded or non shaded mats.

I purchased the Oxygen and Vanilla Sky SSS based textures over at RDNA. There is no doubt they are great textures and they used EZSkin to get the SSS nodes in the textures, but can I get them looking good...nooo! Very pasty looking. I have no regrets in purchasing the products, and with SSS so much depends on lighting, but generally purchased SSS skin based textures have been far too pasty for my liking...whiping out much of the skin detail :/

Hopfully, gamma correction in Poser 10 will correct the skin textures and turn down some of the pastyness.  That's how I do it modo.

I use IDL and avoid evniro mats that have any kind of direct lighting showing in them. this way my figure is just being lit by the IDL and it lookes pretty natural campaired to the background. Iv also used a second IDL emitter placed where the sunlight would fall and that works ok to a degree. I get my specular back by using reflection instead of spec. The specular on the fur in my avatar is reflection.