hello all,

i'm a long time poser user who's looking at blender as a rendering solution (as a start).  the interface is definitely intimidating, as is its power, but i'm slowly going through the wiki textbook Noob to Pro.  i've also poked around in forums, tutorials and galleries.  so far, the only two (free) renderers  i've come across that work with blender (besides the built in one) are yafray and indigo. 

the thing is this: i haven't seen much skin or sss at all in any blender, yafray or indigo galleries.  indigo seems especially impressive (if highly resource intensive).  what i have seen of people looks as if the skin was treated like either plastic or a plain matte diffuse material.  i've seen architectual renders, still lives and even abstracts that (of course) completely blow away anything i could render with poser or d|s, but what very, very few human(oid) renders i've found have been less realistic (sometimes obviously purposely so) than what i can do right now.  sinces poser doesn't even have true sss or global illumination, and every skin shader is a fake of varying degrees of complexity, i think i'm not looking in the right places. 

getting to the point (finally), can anyone show me pictures of impressive blender native, yafray, or even indigo images with good skin shaders?  are there any other free renderers that people would recommend?  are there (fingers crossed) any material or lighting tutorials you'd suggest?  right now my sources of information are very thin and broad (blender.org and Noob to Pro mostly), and i'd love to know about  any recommended resources when it comes to rendering poser scenes in blender.

if no one has any recommendations, i'll bungle along with blender and yafray on my own (and maybe one day dare indigo).   i believe in the tools; i'm just trying to find out if there's a clear path before i begin subjecting blender and other software to random, blind and probably misguided trial and error.