nice render like his hair the lights look fine to me ............***

Think you did a nice job Jilly, I hope a VUE expert can help you out

I've seen worse hair than this [including some of my efforts], for the skin I have to admit to cheating slightly, I tend to use a coloured light or 2 to bring out skin tones if needed!! Cool character by the way!!

very fine work!

Cool looking!

I don't understand why you think you need help. This man looks like he has been through a tough time either fighting or just worrying himself about something. His hair looks like he has raked his fingers through it a thousand times trying to figure an answer to whatever his problem is and his skin looks like he has been sweating with an excess of anxiety. I think you have produced an excellent render!

At the first glance, it seems to me that this is very good and no problem.

Perhaps you could share with us more specifically what it is that you don't like about this one. You might try using softer shadows, but I suspect the stronger shadows are closer to what you want. Don't see the problem with the hair. The only thing I'd try to change--if it were my picture--would be the resolution of the skin texture. It appears to me to be a bit "course" for lack of a better way to say it. Can it be made more high-res? But truly, Jilly, it looks great as is. Sometimes, we just have too high a vision (expectation?) and the finished product just can never measure up to it; no matter how well done it is.

This looks great as it is - but if I can give one tip, it would be to use Global Illumination as it really makes a difference to the reality of an image - but I don't know if it is available in Vue 4! Softer shadows may help, and perhaps the beard looks a little "painted on" rather than real. But these are minor quibbles, I still like your image!

Nice portrait! Depending on what your trying to achieve, softer shadows and maybe some point lights to add a little light to the darkest areas might help.

very nice lighting.

It seems to me, that I feel mood of this person. Good work!

Looks Good....!!

Beautiful portrait!

excellent work!!!

Hair loos fine to me but the goatee beard maybe could do with some work. I'm no good with Vue so can't really offer much help though ... sorry. Tony.

Well I can't help you on techniques but i gotta say that is one hunky looking guy so I hope you get your problem sorted out because I sure wanna see more of him!

Not sure about the Vue problems, as I don't use it, but this character is excellent and very realistic.

Nice, really great work!

Very good portrait. Cool render. 5+

If it makes you feel any better, I have Vue 6 and stranded hair just about makes it crash, and i've got a pretty decent computer with 2 gigs of RAM. Personally, I don't think the hair looks bad, although the beard looks "painted on", if you know what I'm talking about. You might want to try layering on another material with a transparency filter matching the beard hairs. Then push up the bump mapping. The other thing you can try for the scalp hair and skin tones is make a light for each one and tint them; a very pale skin tone for the head, and a light color close to the color you want the hair to look like. I'm not sure if Vue 4 supports this, but with 5 and 6 if you go into the lighting properties you can change the influence of the individual lights. This will only help you if the hair and head loaded as two different objects. If they did and Vue 4 supports that feature, then set up each light so it only influences it's respective object. Hope this helps.

Excellent scene and beautiful render !!! VOTE :5** :):):)