Here's a thank you quick test for bagginsbill's hard work. This is Vanessa for V4 using bagginsbill's VSS Pr3 skin shader with the following settings changes:

SSS set to 0.3
Bump set to 0.015

Lip material changes:

Shine set to 1.7
Shine Spread to 2
Shine level to 4

Lighting setup:

1 yellowish grey IBL light at 100 % intensity (for indirect diffuse light)
1 point light upper right corner set to 50% intensity (specular and shadows)
1 light blue Infinite light in the back left side set to 100% intensity (rim light)

Render time was 3 minutes and 25 seconds on Poser 8.

WOW...!!   Terrific textures,,

For Me the rim light is a bit overdone..

It's a great result.
The specular settings you posted are very high though - I mean, they clearly work for this setup but they are high.
I'm gonna take a guess that the specular maps for this set are very dark (?).

Oh, I see - Sorry, I didn't read your post properly - those were lip materials.

Well but ...

As i can see you dont have environment, just black background, 2 light and 1 IBL, an IDL render with this setup is useless IMHO

Good render anyway !

 No, not useless. As bagginsbill has said, if you do not have an environment, using an IBL will create one for you, surrounding your scene with the luminance values of the color map used in the IBL's material. IDL takes that into account, so it was needed here.

Interesting.  What would happen if you attached an image to the IBL rather than manipulate it's color output?

 That's what is done. I've got a light grey image plugged into the color section of my IBL's material, and I've tinted the Diffuse to slightly, just slightly, yellow. Intensity is 100%. Contrast is 1.

Sorry, I misunderstood that part.  Did you run single lights through IDL for comparison?  I really find the IBL intensity incredibly high, but it seems to work under these conditions.

Edit:  BTW: How did you handle the Gc in the material nodes for this image?

 It's high because the ibl image I'm using is a dark grey top facing hemisphere, so I had to increase the intensity for compensation. Similar how in a studio the photographer will concentrate the most light source using the Key light (which in this case is the upper right point light). IBl is fill lighting to remove most of the shadow from key light.

Edit: It's VSS with bagginbill's skin shader handling the gamma correction. Set to 2.2

 Another test. All elements gamma corrected via the material room, no post processes. Same lighting setup. 6 minute render time, Poser 8.

Quote -  No, not useless. As bagginsbill has said, if you do not have an environment, using an IBL will create one for you, surrounding your scene with the luminance values of the color map used in the IBL's material. IDL takes that into account, so it was needed here.

I agree but you increase your render time, cause you use IC for IDL and IC for IBL

Logicaly if you use IBL you dont need IDL !

 No, that is actually incorrect. While yes, using IDL increases render time, it produces a far more realistic result than ambient occlusion. I am a realist type artist, so I aim for realism in my images.

IDL is worth that extra calculation for the results it produces. I always render with it now. Ambient Occlusion is collecting dust.

I'm also experimenting with tone mapping. I've seen from bagginsbill's previous posts that he has used tone mapping in a daylight exterior scene, so I tried that as well, and got some interesting results. A bit too bright, so more experimenting required before I show images, though.

I ran some test renders using your settings and began scaling back on IBL intensity, all the way back to 25%.  And I found that it changed very little in all my images.  Have you looked at various IBL intensities in your experiments?  I will do further testing to verify my conclusions.

I'm getting confused. In some posts you say IDL (Indirect Lighting), in others you say IBL (Image Based Lighting). Are you using both? Although I suppose in Poser IDL is not a physical light, you make no mention of it in your first post in your light setup.

The renders look great by the way!

@ DarrenUK - gamedever's using an IBL light but also activating IDL in the render options so that IDL uses the IBL image as a sort of environment if I understand it right. I've tried using IDL with and without IBL and there is a difference.

There is a substantial difference, especially when you compare IBL based  default ambient occlusion and IDL. 

@ witchdidi:  That is the same conclusion I'm assuming.  However, I am not totally convinced that high intensity IBL adds anything substantial to IBL renders.  Off to experiment.

Have you set your key light (the point light in the upper right corner) to inverse square falloff? I have, so when I scale back the IBL  intensity I do see a major difference (since the point light has a smaller range of luminance and is not constant).

Okay, something else to consider.  Thanks.  Will definitely play with it when the opportunity arises later today. 

 Also try putting the same skin shader on v4's tongue and see what happens. I copied the lip material onto the tongue and replaced the texture maps and decreased the specularity a little.

It really adds to the realism of her tongue. It now looks wet, bumpy and much better than before.

Got that.  Generally I keep the shaders simple for the inner mouth and tongue.  I use a bump/displacement map and connect a glossy node to Alt_Specular.  Willing to try your method for comparison.

Did you create a separate Lip Template in your VSSProp?

 I did not. I just copied and replaced for simplicity testing. The reason I used the shader on it is because it gamma corrects the tongue as well. Before, the tongue looked purple, but now it's bright pink proper.

Thanks again.  That clarifies alot.

Nice images.

gamedever is correct - whether you use a self-lit Image Environment Sphere OR you use an Image Based Light, either will supply global illumination data for use with IDL. Only the IES will provide reflection data for the Reflect node - IBL will not do that. So that is a difference worth considering. But this is not important for dry skin. It is important for wet skin if you bother to use reflection on the skin shader, which I have not shown anybody how to do, but you might figure it out yourselves. (Do any of you remember my muddy/wet skin shader demos? I forgot to publish that shader.)

Anyway, there is indeed a very big difference between IDL and AO. AO merely darkens things, and sometimes darkens the wrong things. IDL may darken or lighten things - this is the key - when you put your hand near your cheek, your cheek becomes brighter and more red if the hand is angled correctly - only IDL handles this. In other situations, the hand will merely shadow the cheek, as simulated by AO.

So, to fully appreciate the impact of IDL on one of these "isolated figure" scenes, you have to take into account whether or not the ground is well lit, and also consider the pose. In gamedever's last image, we cannot clearly see armpits and the thighs are far apart. Change that pose to reveal the mutual occlusion of arm to torso, or thigh to thigh, and you will see a big difference between IBL+AO versus IBL+IDL.

 Oh my gosh bagginsbill said my name and said I was correct. Excuse me while I go burn that into my memory forever.

pause

Okay, back.

Was I right to borrow the skin shader for the tongue, or do you recommend a different shader?

how did you managed to do an IDL render without messing with the eylashes? I'm trying to render with idl settings, but in portrait, the eyelashes get a stained look...

Is you question about VSS or about IDL? I have no trouble with eyelashes on either, so ...

about IDL... sorry being off topic, but seemed a good chance of presenting my problem

So how does it look without IDL?

didn't saved the poser file (since actually poser shut down on me) but it's not blurry. I'm using FK Design Bettine for v4 skin, with one of her tatooed make ups

ps: by the way, got the free version of your VSS. Amazing!

Hmm. Well I don't know what to suggest. IDL doesn't change transparency maps that I'm aware of. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that product (or pretty much any, for that matter), so I'm not able to narrow down the possibilities knowing the name.

In general (not unique to IDL) fine lashes can be messed up by having a min shading rate set to high in render settings, or because of texture filtering.

If you used VSS on the figure, it would turn the texture filtering off in the shaders, but you should still check that in the material room of the figure's lash material.

What was the min shading rate you were using?

How is that lit?  I can tell there is at least one light that is set to have no shadows (specular coming from the inside of the mouth) - this is bad, and can provoke some really bad artifacts.  E.g. light from behind the character's head hits the back side of the eyelash polys and bounces around in an impossible way.

Do you have AO on for any lights?  If so, turn it off.  Do you have AO on for any materials?  Turn it off.

P8 still has a problem with blotch artifacts, which can appear in places where you have geometry close to other geometry (like your eyelash problem).  These are hard to predict and sometimes hard to correct, usually I have to just move lights around more or less at random.  The IDL solution itself is somewhat random too, and blotch artifacts can appear in different locations (or if you're lucky, not at all) even if other conditions are not changed.

Bagginsbill: as I said before, poser shut down on me and I didn't saved the file, but I'm pretty sure the min shading rate was 0,4, and to be honest I had forget this part of the problem, I'm doing another render now (with another character, and now using VSS ^_^) and the same light set, that comes with render studio avaiable at rdna.

pjz99: the geometry can be a problem, the upper of this morph is very near the eyelashes, and maybe the lightset affected the overall result, of course. Re-testing again.

Quote - P8 still has a problem with blotch artifacts, which can appear in places where you have geometry close to other geometry (like your eyelash problem). 

Paul,

Funny - I was just speaking to SM about that. They're working on it. Meanwhile, Larry Weinberg said that it's related to Firefly now being a hybrid REYES renderer (micro-polys) and a traditional ray-tracer (for IDL, etc.) Internally they disagree about exact positions sometimes. He said that if you render the whole scene through a Refract node (like I do with the "Artistic Lens") then Firefly becomes a pure ray-tracer and there will be no artifacts. I haven't tried it yet. If you're curious, give it a go. Set up a one-sided square in front of the camera, and only a Refract node with IOR = 1 plugged into Alt Diffuse. Turn off DV and SV, of course.

Note: You'll lose displacement because of this, but that isn't always important.

BTW: I was looking on your site and your demo renders for your freebies are amazing.

Thanks.  Where does the Refract node go exactly?  you mean have the square poly in front of the camera like a "filter"?  with the Refract node on that?

Yes. Like a filter or a lens.

You've never seen my artistic lens thread?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029

In that I discuss the use of a square to mediate what gets rendered. Using it, you can alter the output of the render, like postwork, but directly in Poser. That means you can convert to gray scale, do exposure compensation, gamma correction or tone mapping, special effects of all sorts, etc.

Yeah I have, but I don't actually use any of those techniques so there wasn't any experience behind it.

It occurs to me that if displacement won't be visible in the render this way, then very likely polygon smoothing won't either (also relies on micropolygons).

err, in case it is not clear I have the Element display setting for the square set to toon outline to show which way the normal is facing (towards the camera).

Your material is 100% transparent. Whoops. You're not refracting at all.

Set Tranparency to 0 - both of them.

I bet you did that so you could see through the lens in preview. Here's a tip. Turn the lens around 180 degrees. It won't block your view in preview, but it will refract in render. Backfacing polys are invisible in preview.

Okay, I'll redo it with the transparency set to zero - I thought this was required, oops.

edit: yeah I can already see that it's behaving quite differently this way, it seems to be making many many more ray hits (red dots).  This is a good sign, to me.  Render should be finished inf a few minutes.

edit: I can see this is killing polygon smoothing (not really surprised, but disappointed).

Yeah, losing the smoothing is a problem.