Emma Apel ( photorealism) human skin help.

So, this is the character that I have been woking on for sometime.
Help on improving her skin and overall photorealism whould be most helpful
thank you. oh, plus don’t mind the bottom unrendered part. I accidently pressed esc key wen rendering, and I didn’t want to waste 20mins of re rendering.


I would say put some more red tones in around the eyes, nose, ears, and cheeks.
(edit) also, maybe less light colored hairs on the eyebrows.

Hi,
Are the dark areas some shadows or make-up ? It looks strange.
I think you got conflicting shadows due to lighting, which increase the strange feeling about the skin.

Moreover it would be easier to appreciate the skin shader without the compositing.

Dark areas? You mean the random shadow on her side? I don’t really why I did it but I felt like doing it. Do you want to see the file?

If try using one of the skin shaders available now to provide contrast.

There are a couple free very good ones. As well MH2skin (commercial -but inexpensive) is excellent.
The layers and nodes out of the box will put you in the ballpark


I just Tweaked her skin settings, and still working on her hair. Don’t mind the redness on her shadow, that’s because I put environmental map on red to give saturated photo effect.
The file is little too big so I put it on a link up above.

She looks great now. I think maybe her skin needs more SSS, the neck especially is a little too diffuse. The micro-cracks and pores are awesome (how’d you do that?) but I think they should be smaller ( maybe not the pores, just the micro-cracks). The hair would be better with some frizz. I think the lighting is fine, but you might want to consider using HDR if you want photorealism. Is this cycles or BI?