Thanks very much, Lillaanya! From your post, I see that some of this is going to come back to shaders... VSS has been a stroke of fortune, since Bagginsbill has some very good pre-settings in there for skin.. but I'd be pretty much flying blind otherwise.

I don't skimp on render settings.

I've rendered twice, first with test render, then with high quality... I'll try again with a complete reload of the prop, but something is definitely going wrong for me at this point....

Antonia is already available? Did I miss where? I thought it was only mesh & texture templates so far....

Silke: I suspect getting the older look (well, to a point - 60 is a different story than 35) right has as much to do with the texture as with the morph. I think what I did here is just the DAZ hi-res textures though: http://www.believable3d.com/gallery/pitchfork.jpg (I admit I paid more attention to the face than the body.)

flibbits: I would lighten up on the squareness of the chin, as well as the angularity of the jaw - go for a softer curve toward the ear. I'd say the cheek lines are also too angular and pronounced.

Thanks, all... sounds like there really aren't any great tutorials. Google wasn't much help either.

I've had decent results with darker hairs - dark brown, black. Light brown, blonde, most reds... not so much. And the hair is usually much more realistic at the scalp than in long locks. Curls, well....

I've definitely seen promo renders for hair where I wouldn't be satisfied, myself. But OTOH, I do see some promo renders that indicate I could be getting better results if I knew better what I was doing. And sometimes, an artist gets a far better render than you would have thought would be possible with a given product. I can't believe that's all postwork.

As far as vendor promos, see DigiCalimero's WildHair (which, admittedly, I don't own). A better example, since I own both the hair and the textures: Firebirdz's 5 Muses for Clio. Most of those renders are incredible... you can tell it's not a photo, but it's very good. From the same vendor, see also In Love Again for Sapphire Fox. Absolutely amazing stuff....

Not quite at that level, but I'd also rate some (tho not all) of Breeze's Dream Collection (e.g. Olessa) promo renders very high.. much better than what I'm usually achieving, at any rate. Certainly, quite a bit of plus3D's promo work.

I don't think I've got the patience for strand-based hair (and am already feeling burdened by render times)... and I have to admit I'm still pretty skeptical about it. Could you show some realistic examples, svdl?

A few ideas for younger faces...

1. Soften. You mention "rounder head" but this must go beyond general head shape... soften the cheeks, eliminate/reduce angularities, especially in jaw area.

2. Pay attention to the nose. The nose tends to point further downward and have the bridge come out with age... so push the nose tip upward a bit, and recess the bridge.

3. Try making the lips a bit fuller.

But it's probably most important to look at photographs. Find a photo of a child or teen that has a general resemblance to the character you're working on. Then compare what's different. It's very easy to overlook specific features when dealing in the abstract.

Be sure your images are in the right colour format. It may be your printer is using CMYK? If so, you'll need to convert from RGB. (This can be done in Photoshop.)

Thanks for making the updated PR3 available, Bantha and BB... I tried using the PR3 briefly but found I was getting better luck with #1 in my renders. Time to try again. :)

Because I wanted to sum things up for a dummy like myself, I did the following: www.believable3d.com/resources/vss_for_dummies.php

Quote -
If I may, I shall now trans-thread link you to a place where I trans-thread link you back to this thread, answering your question there, and therefore here, but not here actually, well, you get the idea.

Thanks, BagginsBill!

odf, you asked who the model reminds people of. Not the body, but once BB got going with the skin shaders, I thought Gwyneth Paltrow pretty much immediately.

Anyway, this is a very exciting project. You and Phantom and BB are all doing an absolutely fantastic job. Really nice to see a female model that deals with shoulders/underarms properly.

I'm pretty sure it was discussed somewhere in this thread... can anybody tell me how / point me to the relevant discussion regarding adding new rules (i.e. add new zones) for TemplateSkin?

Thanks!

Okay, I thought I had tried the PR3 mtl file before, but maybe not... The instructions are to "Load the PR3 skin shader into the PR2 control prop... but I'm not clear how to do that. I'm in the materials room, and have PR2 > Template Skin selected... but I don't know how to load the mtl file... :-

EDIT: Nevermind. I rediscovered. IsaoShi's instructions from Nov 7 @ 1:36 p.m. :)

I've used the VSS2 prop. I'll revisit it, but in my experience it took considerably more work to get things looking good out of the box.

I'm actually using Poser Pro... I'll probably need to turn off GC. (I did think about that, but just thought I'd see how it would render as is.)