Good positioning. Nice action. Great texture on the ankle bonds and the socks. The only advice I can give that might help: 1) Make your leading light more white, or very slightly blue. There is a lot of blue light in that room, despite the color of the chairs in the foreground. 2) You have great movement in the character, but despite that, the loincloth just doesn't look right. Perhaps you could lower it closer to his butt. On the other hand, you do need to add some postwork to the hair to give it motion. 3) And last thing that might help, get a photorealistic texture for Mike. The low res version available at DAZ is excellent. And it works great up to the proverbial 3' away. This is excellent for a 10 minute set up. Move the loincloth down and spend a little time in texturing and post work, and it'll look pretty darn real! Good luck.

Thanks for the comment.

) Make your leading light more white, or very slightly >blue. There is a lot of blue light in that room, despite >the color of the chairs in the foreground.
Getting the lighting right is definitely the hardest part. By the way, does anyone know a program that tries to do that automatically (adjusting the brightness/color setup from one picture/layer to another). I use psp and it does not seem to have a function for that

1. You have great movement in the character, but despite >that, the loincloth just doesn't look right. Perhaps you >could lower it closer to his butt. On the other hand, you >do need to add some postwork to the hair to give it motion.
   I agree with the loincloth. Clothes in general are very hard to get to look realistic. I have experimented with adding those in postprocessing but it's time consuming. The hair looks fine to me though.
2. And last thing that might help, get a photorealistic >texture for Mike. The low res version available at DAZ is >excellent. And it works great up to the proverbial 3' away.
   I actually use a pretty highres texture from the marketplace (can't recall the name right now) and I have bought numerous other ones which all have there pros and cons (I don't want to have body hair for this character) Why don't you like this one?

This is excellent for a 10 minute set up. Move the >loincloth down and spend a little time in texturing and >post work, and it'll look pretty darn real! Good luck.
Thanks. My goal is to cut down the postwork time as much as possible as I intend to do a lot of pics of that nature. Of course one can spend hours tweaking every detail but setting up the pose and doing all the test renders takes long enough. Any more time and it would be more efficient to hire a real world model ;-)

looks cool. Just add some more shadows at the table. look at the shadows aof the chairs at the floor to get the right angle.

About the texture: I'm not sure what it is about it that puts the image off. Perhaps it is too uniform... even folks that spend a majority of their time outside have tonal variations under their arms and at the groin, at their elbows, and sometimes even at the hands and chest. Not everyone is the same, however, so if you like that particular texture, stick with it! My comment about the hair stems from the way it is not reacting to gravity. Some of the hair at the back of his head, and definitely his bangs need to droop towards the floor (even if ever-so-slightly). Of course, these are merely suggestions... take what you want and leave the rest behind. What you have is still really good. I look forward to seeing any final render you choose to show.