In theory, if I used a light meter on a person using similar lighting that I am using in Poser, and then turned it on the monitor with a Poser model, could the light be tweaked so that the Poser model's eyes look less manequin like? I noticed that Poser 5 didn't really improve on the eyes, at least not from what I've seen. It still looks manequinish. Could the light meter work or would the monitor disrupt and give false data compared to being used on natural light?

The monitor would hose things up. Part of the deal with the manequinish eyes in the geometry. Somewhere out there are morphs to make Stephanie's and Victoria's eyes catch the light better. There's also "contact lense" props in the freestuff section to help add glints. If you're willing to pay, Cake1's Real Eyes are tops for adding life to the eyes. IF I can find both sets of textures, I'll render a side-by-side comparison for you.

OK, got that comparison pic done. If Cake1'd had something this posted somewhere, I would have snatched up her eyes earlier than I did. On Rose's right (our left) is Cake1's eyes, on her left/our right is Nerd's New Eyes, which I believe are built similarly to the Millenium Figure's Eyes. I'm using Anton's daylight light set. Except for moving to fit the maps, the same texture is on each eye.

And another in extreme closeup. This is a pretty simple texture. With a really nice one, the difference is even more extreme.

Yeah, the wooden look of the original Poser 3 & 4 character's eyes bugged me too. That's why I'm redoing the geometry itself in Lightwave 7.5 at home. (The fact I'll be able be able to make morphs in Lightwave instead of Ray Dream is an added bonus... :D ) If you go & check out "Inside Lightwave 7" at your local bookstore, there's a section by modeler Stu Aitkins(sp?) on modelling a human female head from scratch including eyes with corneas. It's worth checking out for ideas... :D

The problem are not the lights but the lighting model of Poser. Poser uses Lambert model for diffuse light and Phong/Blinn for the specular components. These models aren't good for human skin.

Stupidity also evolves!

Excellent feedback. Laughing Vulcan, I'll see what I can do to investigate your suggestion. Thanks for the help Fyrespirit. I've really been studying photographs of real people and it seems like the key would be a variant gray scale/lighting. I've noticed that the human eye in photos seems to have varying degrees of gray in them from a combination of shadow from the brow, cheeks, or the lower-nose bridge and an off-mattte white. I seem to find that the glossy eye look tends to come when you are using a flash to take a photo and not neccesarily twinkling on their own (unless of course you are depicting something in fantasy like a fairie). Am I on the right track?