Attached Link: Bloodsong's Gallery

heyas; i had to grab keoto's really cool pharaoh guys (or at least this one, which is the gold one) and try out this scene idea with a panther. (that's not the panther, it's the p4 lion, actually.) and, uh... this is the result, and i just don't like it. i couldn't get the skin tone to turn out right. in poser, i tried mixing skin textures with a dark material base to get nice, rich dark skin. but vue doesn't do materials AND texture maps, so i tried to mix materials to fake it. didn't work well at all. i couldn't seem to tip the balance to the dark colour and not totally lose the texture map. (in poser, the texture map was set to like 75%, not full strength.) this is the size/proportions for the zygote calendar contest. it's just a tad too wide, so i end up with empty edges. i dunno, maybe some papyrus in there? i don't want to spread out the figures and the torches too much, they'll lose their cohesion. the fake heat-haze bit turned out... um, a bit strong! that's a plane with my air shader, and some horizontal ripple bumping and refraction. the pyramids... bleh. i turned up the fog and haze to fade them into the distance, but they should really be darker, as the sun is behind them. maybe i should put them over a hill. any other ideas? (nothing too complicated, i hope!)