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I did want to say tho, back on topic - that one thing, which I meant to mention in a previous post - that bugs me about all the photo-realism and hi-res textures and such, is this:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_11/file_507223.jpg

This example, from Wolf, isn't too bad, but it's not just the burned-in highlights that bug me (I don't see much of that in this image), but also the burned-in wrinkles and folds that wind up looking like scars or magic markers most of the time because they're just not natural-looking at all. I'm pointing specifically to the wrinkles in the forehead, and under the chin. Too many texture artists try using these lines instead of blending them out and creating displacement maps to create the folds in the skin, the way it should be done if you're aiming for realism. Those lines are created by the lighting in real life and how that light passes through the skin (sub-surface scatter), not the skin color itself. The skin will sometimes blend into a bit of a darker area around those wrinkles, but if you look in a mirror, and stretch out the wrinkles in your own forehead, you will usually see that the creases themselves, when flattened, are whiter than the rest of the skin around them.

You see this especially right along the creases of butt cheeks and thighs. Someone just posted a render of a Dawn character in another thread recently, where those butt-crease lines look like really bad surgery scars. They don't even follow the bends of the model in different poses, because those creases in real life are more shadow than anything else. It's horrible when used in textures and takes away from the realism in any image, regardless of how realistic the rest of the lighting and scene might look.

And I think also this is one of the big reasons why older characters aren't seen very often, cause the few who do try doing older people, want to fill the faces and bodies with wrinkles, which wind up looking like the Carver (from Nip-Tuck) got hold of them. It's just bad looking. Let the wrinkles be created by displacement maps and lighting, not the texture itself.

This is especially apparent in hand/finger textures, where the skin on the knuckles show all the wrinkles from the photo. Makes the hands look dirty like they've been diggin in things and places they shouldn't be diggin in.

You can't just clone a skin from 3d.sk over a UV map and pass it off as photo real. Those skin photos need a lot of prep work to blend out highlights AND shadows, along with the specs of dirt and hairs and bits that are often found.

I do agree with this. I think texturing is an artform (At least that's what I tell the guy I do characters with). You have to know what to take out and what to keep in to strike a balance. Sometimes taking out something wipes out detail, so some of has to stay. And it does depend on what render engine you use as well. And as you texture, you have to render it in the target engine--not the one in the texturing program to see how it looks. The forehead wrinkle are annoying as is forgetting to take out the eye creases so when you close the model's eyes theres not this big line going across. I've also had to go back and clean the spec around the sides of the mouth as well. I think the more non-biased renders (such as Octane and Luxrender) need a cleaner texture for more realistic results because you aren't faking the lighting so you don't need as much tricks in the skin detail.

Quote - That and these extremely flat, plastic doll ears. No two ears look exactly alike in real life - they are as unique as finger prints and irises, and yet every figure has the same perfect, volumeless ears that look more like deformed cookies stuck to the sides of a head. For those that do custom head sculpts, they should really pay more attention to the ears.

I try to play with ears shapes as well on my morphs... and hands, feet, back, nostrils, and glutes too ;)