Attached Link: "The Dark Side" Gallery Image

I was just trying out different lighting. This is a spot light with a close fall-off and no env. lighting.
I am unsure what is going on with the ear, to ensure its not a texture map issue, Im going to try my shader on a different texture set. 

Linked is my gallery image under even darker lighting 

Here is what im at now. Eyes are still too red on the sides but they are getting better.  The skin is looking great!

Hey Everyone,

Here is what im at now. Eyes are still too red on the sides but they are getting better.  The skin is looking great!

There is something odd going on with the ear

I had another crack at the eyes and the teeth, eyes are better but still a ways off

Quote - **
@Templar**
The one on the right looks less waxy although you didn't say which is which, and the math nodes just go right over my head right now.

If the one on the right is the one we're seeing in the nodes, I'd say there's some success even on the first try, but if it's the one on the left then maybe the bumps aren't the correct tightness together or the correct height.

Basically, that's what I'm getting at here; the rougher the finish something has, the more diffused or softer the specular highlight becomes.  Think of frosted glass compared to shiny glass, the difference is the frosted glass looks dull because of the ultra-tiny bumps, but polish it up and you get normal glass again.  In other words, it's a matter of playing with nodes until you are able to alter the hardness of the specular through playing with bump but without adjusting the specualr (for the most part, anyway).

I used to test it on a sphere and cube with just one light in the scene, no distractions.

The image on the left is without "finish" and the image on the right is with.

I am really liking the look of the shader with this noise added to it, you are correct that it looks less waxy and more natural.  I am just tweaking some nodes now to try and improve specular, which was dulled significantly by the noise.

Baggins, I am unsure how feasible using the reflect node for skin based specularity is, I just gave it a quick try, and you need some serious render settings to get anything approaching solid specular.   And I think most people are not going to go down the route of lightless rendering, at least for now.

Thanks for the renders of different blinn and reflect levels.  They are enlightning!

I am sure the KS_Microfacet node works with infinite lights also

If you have PP2014, use the raytrace preview window

Wow thankyou for picking my image!  Im honored!

The color node has the top color at 200,200,200 and the others at completely black. Unfortunately my laptop ran out of power, so I can't screenshot for you.

I use actual "poser units" or the default setting. I don't think it has a real world representation

Here I have taken my specular map, inverted it, the used it to control the max of a noise node, finally the noise and bump are adjusted to -05 <> 0.5 and then compared against each other and the max between the two is used for bump mapping.

Here is the shader (actually the complete skin shader) with the "finish" added and a comparison to without the noise and with the noise

Quote - scene with light moved to 45° x 45° consists of only one poser light, and no diffuse surfaces other than ground and girl?

 in re: bluish-greenish fingernails, I recall your skin shader from last year also had that cast on the skin, before you corrected it.  perhaps fingernails shader was from old shader.

however, it looks very good.  lower lip also bluish near corners.  in PP2014, does blue still scatter more than other colours?

That image has a black sphere encompassing the scene to catch and contain any stray light rays, but as its black, it should not effect the scene.

With regards to the fingernails, it seems that I lost the latest version of that scene somehow, including the really fantastic eye shader and better nails.  To be honest, i have not actually done any work on the nails in these images, they just use the skin shader with sharper specular and less SSS.

I am unsure if that is fixed, but from my experience there seems to be little to no difference in PP2014

Quote - I have wanted to bring up a discussion like this for months. There must be a way to do specular with the scatter setup that does not make my poser people look like they've got a grease problem or like I said above, have been oiled up to go to the beach. I guess what I'm getting at is the 'Octane' look, although that's a little too dry in my opinion.

This is the reason that I keep at my own skin shaders!  When I look at my skin, compared to what I can create in Poser (or use in Poser), its the specular that always look nothing like my skin.  One day!

attached - same scene with light moved to 45° x 45°

I also slightly reduced the specular

LatexLuv I never stop playing with materials :P

Actually the specular on the lips is the same as the skin. On my particular texture set (DAZ Elite Alana), the specular map includes much brighter specular value for the lips. If you find the lips too dry, increase the specular values of both microfacet nodes equally. Probably double

attached is half displacement and smooth poly's off

The specular here is a combination of 2 microfacet nodes one coloured by a HSV modified texture map.