RedPhantom posted at 8:38AM Sat, 16 January 2021 - #4410446

adp001 posted at 7:43AM Sat, 16 January 2021 - #4410437

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:30AM Sat, 16 January 2021 - #4410434

The entire point here is that the textures make or break the realism...

At least for close-ups. Figures with a certain distance to the camera do not need mutch detailed texturemaps. Look at some photographs. Even if a face ist just a fraction of the whole image, it is clearly identified as "real face". So, there must be something more than just textures to mimic reality. And no, a complicated "shader" alone doesn't help here...

I don't think there is any one thing that can be changed. You need good textures, that includes the diffuse map, bump map, etc. You need a good shader to put them on. It doesn't need to be complicated, just enough to do what you need. You need good lighting. Textures and shaders don't matter if you can't see them. You need a good pose. Very few people are truly expressionless. If nothing else, there are micro-expressions that we may not recognize but our subconscious sees them.

There's also hair and surroundings, but that's a different discussion.

There are tons of Poser characters. There must be a at least a few with good texture maps, that will do the job.