I'm trying to render this scene but I just can't get the light right, the skin always has too much shine I've tried loads of different light settings and still nothing happens, I'm thinking it may now be a case of editing the skin texture but I'm a n00b and am not very confident in doing this :(

Hi DS, Try taking the bump map and duplicating it into the Shininess channel. Then set the texture map to about 50-60 percent full value in the shininess channel. There is no 100 percent, consistent way to get flawless skin textures. It's always a process of working with both the texture maps and the lighting for every scene. Mark

Attached Link: Carrara 5 Native tutorial

Another thing to note is you can use a highlight map in the highlight channel. Try using the bump map as Mark said. Also setting highlight as a percentage will give more control. Then adjust. Poser uses a black as highlight which I don't find works well. This is why people push the shininess to make is so small it sorta disappears. Because of this people will tell u shininess is backwards.Then of course sss, but that gets involved. Nice, but do that later. I suggest using native and getting shaders and saving them in carrara. As Mark said it's tweaking. Being able to save a base setup can save u time. Here's a little tut I put together on yahoo list to see if it helps on native. This test is w/ image maps and sss. Lighting can help too like hdri, but mainly it is the textures. Shonner has a tut on his site on skin w/ procedurals u may find interesting. (shonner.com, I believe) Certain textures are very hard to get w/ procedurals tho.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.