I've been using Poser for quite sometime but only just started using V4. I'm still a little undecided on how I feel about the latest Vicky model. Elbow and knee poke through when adding clothes, the absolutely AWFUL scaling system, what was wrong with the old method of giving each body part X, Y and Z scales? Instead we get morph forms for lengthening her legs or sizing her head... Which most clothing figures don't take into account or plain just don't work. Same thing goes for hair, adjust the head size and adding hair be it conforming or otherwise is a PITA. Conforming hair sits in the wrong place and you're left with just parenting the model which doesn't let the hair sit right... I digress...

My point or rather question is about a lot of the fantastic texture maps that are available for her. Although I've spent a fair amount of tme in the material room I've never learnt it to a great extent, I make the odd adjustment here or there but very rarely even look at the advanced tab. There's obviously a lot more going on with the V4 figures in the advanced tab but I'm seeing nodes and connections all over the place and don't really understand what I'm looking at.

Now most of the V4 textures I've bought look stunning, the light and reflection is fantastic!  My question is how are the texture maps used to look so good? Take FRAD-Eden for example ( http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=70124 ) is this down to displacement, specular or shaders? And can it be applied to V3 models. I have a huge amount of V3 stuff and I'd love to use V4 and V3 characters in the same render but when V3's skin comes out looking flat whereas V4's skin looks "alive" the renders don't look so great.

If this effect is possible for V3, can someone point me to a tutorial that would give similar/same results or just explain to me what the term is for this lifelike looking skin?

Thanks,
(feeling like such a noob!) Fang.