I think I should clear up a few things... One, I do appreciate everyone who responded. You took the time to weigh in and try to help me out, so thank you! Second, my shader does not just work for me in one specific lighting or environment. It works like 90% of the time, which is why I was confused when I got these splotchy artifacts in the first place. I don't have, or know what 'EZskin' is. If you look at post 22 you'll see that I did try a simple Scatter setup based on suggestions but still got the same artifacts. I also tried to render just a small 1" square of the scene with Irradiance Caching turned off, but after 2 hours (as Richard60 predicted) I had to cancel it because it had not even finished the precalculations so I guess that isn't really a viable strategy... I just tried primorges suggestion of adding a low intensity point light (below render). It did minimize the splotchyness some but did not eliminate it, and also changes the scene lighting away from what I was originally after. It's somewhat disappointing because I was really liking the lighting in the hall before I added a figure. I used a half cylinder with the front half set as a light emitter around each of the hall lights, I don't know how I would achieve that same effect using real lights. I could probably simulate it with 3 spotlights apiece but that would add 24 lights to the scene....