Ok, I could use some feedback at this stage. I've done morphs and props before, but I'm a texture newbie. I don't have the photo equipment necessary to do a stunningly hi-res texture set like those at RDNA or ZS3D, but well, here's my work in progress. I'd really like to know what I can improve here- by all means point out the flaws!

I'm borrowing the lash trans map from BMO's Oxana for this render, my lash trans map and also my skin bump map are not yet finished. The texture itself is from photos of folks I know, including my own eyeballs. And about the ear.. I just slapped that hair on last minute (Alice Hair) so as not to show you yet another bald Vicky. Also, I realize I have to put more texture into the cheek skin, I faded it too quickly to boring solid color...

Thanks, -Adam

Well you've mentioned my main criticism, the lack of texture in the skin. Ther's something not quite right about the eye's though I think the whites need darkening just a smidge and they're just a little too pink I think. Otherwise it looks great! Baz

I think It's very nice and will be beautiful in group scenes when high rez is a drawback. My only comment/question is about the white highlight in the eyelid. Is that in the texture or lighting. If in the texture, I would add a tad of color. If you want that to show up under lighting and you are using photoshop, why not try a quick little mask fot the lids and add the plastic wrap filter, then fade it to just a little and see of that works. Just a thought.

The eyelid highlight is in the texture, from the camera flash in the original photo. I will fade that a bit to get rid of the baked-on lighting effect. As for group scenes.. yes, I made this texture at 3000x3000 (head and body each) intended it to be used in full-figure shots. I am showing it above in a headshot to show the level of detail, but I don't intend to use it for close-up work like this. My apologies also if the colors are weird in this render. I did this here at work on my El Cheapo uncalibrated shadow-mask monitor. Usually when I get home to my trinitron screen and look at renders I did at work, I cringe from the weird color casts or funny gamma.

Attached Link: http://labreport.curiouslabs.com/article/articleview/103/1/8/

H, well I think you did a fine job, I actually read this this morning, and it is great, and I think it might actually help you out alot.....Sydd is great, go read this tutorial, it will help you. Sharen

I have a minor thing to mention, so please don't whack me everyone. But her hair is unnaturally intersected with her right ear lobe. I've been messing around with trying to make the eyes less manequinish by adding very light grays over the entire eye. But this was done in Photoshop and not in Poser, so I'll sit back down now. :p Good work on the image overall. Eyebrows and eyelashes are still my weak points in my self-teaching expedition.

You get whacked with the "big stick o' shame" for not reading my post before commenting on the ear :-P

I like her enormously-- one comment. Does the texture have the smile built in? That can be a huge detriment if you want another expression. I think the eyes look good enough for me to even use and I usually use nothing but Real Eyes. She's incredibly different from everything that's out there-- only Papu faces come even close. Doesn't look like Vickie at all! The very ends of the eyebrows are a little awkward and too regular, just making one of them different should work-- assymetrical faces are a premium. As for bump maps, I've been using the dna bump and grind maps for textures without bumps and they work very well up close. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine Anybody making this good a texture for their first. Emily

I think, even though you are using a photo, you should smooth out the eye area a little, so that it appears to be concave. also, a bit of "noise" won't hurt it. here is one i am making...but, i am just painting mine....see how the shadows give depth to the eyes? i don't have a bump map on this...but the "noise" helps a little, i think. don't laugh, folks, this is just a wip...playing with deep paint and psp....not even antialiased...and optimized for jpg compression. my eye area needs more work, too.

Queri-- fear not, the smile is not built into the texture. Her smile is mostly due to the use of built-in Vic 2.0 morphs for Smile, Open Smile, Frown, Open Lips, etc.. but before that she has 7 of my own custom morphs shaping her lips and mouth area. On the texture map, the lips are the usual shape, in the usual place. I did indeed follow the advice in Syyd's atricle while creating this texture. That article was actually my inspiration for making a texture of my own in the first place. Most of the work I'm doing on it now is getting rid of the obvious symmetry that came from making half a face and mirroring it. Symmetry in the lips, brows and nose is pretty obvious in my render above. I have to deal with the out of focus nose pores too. When I took the whole-face photo, the depth of field caused this. I think I have to take another nose photo and patch this part of the texture. What I'm not sure how to do is skin detail in the neck. I'm guessing this is a common problem-- I don't have the RAM to do a 24,000 x 24,000 body texture, which is about what it would take to get the neck in the same scale as the head. I think I have to just live with the comparativley smooth, detail-less neck. Thanks to everyone here for the feedback, all the advice is really helpful and I've got plenty more to work on today :-)

Noise is not a bad idea for the neck-- and there are some skin tex brushes in free stuff-- don't know how good they are. The neck does kinda give it away when there's nothing there. And, yes, it is a common problem, even on very high priced textures. Emily

wow...first i heard of free skin text brushes....woohoo...thank you emily!!!

OK, still no bump map finished (sigh, it's more work that I expected), but here is round 2. I tweeked a few things that were suggested to me above, and I also made a different expression for this sample (slightly worried look). I added a bit of noise to the skin, which I had to be subtle with. I had to run a 2px median filter over the noise too, to make it more like skin blotches and less like film grain.

Looking goooooood. Sharen

If I may... just one little thing. Both eyeballs have a large vein in the middle at the same place which causes us to see an imaginary line right across the eyes, if you know what I mean.

She's coming along great!

yes, looking much better. she should be a cutie.