Skin way darker in renders than in store

paphus

Sometimes when I buy a new model from Daz3D and do a basic render it looks like the store image, which is good.

But some models, then render looks nothing like the store image.

Take Vicoria 7 as an example, here is a basic render (attached)

her skin is tanned, but in the store image it is pinkish white.

An even better example is Paloma

http://www.daz3d.com/fwsa-paloma-hd-for-victoria-7

In my render she is dark skinned, almost black

but in the store image she is tanned.

Is there some magic render setting I am missing?

 

 

nonesuch00

This comes up all the time. DAZ 3D products should start including saved lighting setups for the renders used in ad copy in the DAZ Store because most of the newer iRay skin texture products lead to questions like yours.

The easiest way to fix it without cranking the lighting setting to be so bright as to wash out the other colors is to go into the Surfaces Tab and delete all the Top Coat maps from the surfaces and then after you get the skin tone to be what was expected when you purchased save your changes as a, eg, Victoria 7 (sans Top Coat).duf Material Preset in your own personal presets folder.

However, doing that will give the render a slightly oily look all over the body and usually the face is oilier than the rest of the body.

Others have other ways of compensating for what you describe mostly but adding very bright lighting studio style I think. Maybe some of them will come by and explain how they compensate.

There are studio style lighting with reflectors iRay settings in your Content Library folder.

Lyoness

we use pretty bright lighting in our promos.

secondly you can reduce the translucency of the skin... that will give you a lighter skin.

nonesuch00

Lyoness said:

we use pretty bright lighting in our promos.

secondly you can reduce the translucency of the skin... that will give you a lighter skin.

Can you tell us how you do it as this question comes up all the time and I tell them what I do but they'd probably rather have the advice of DAZ 3D or a PA. Maybe you can attach light settings as a starter? And maybe typical material setting on G2F you use?

Jimbow

Go to tonemapping in the iray settings and lower the F-Stop value, or lower the Shutter Speed value, or increase the Film ISO value. Also try increasing the Burn Highights, as this compresses the upper tonal range to make a pretty picture, but can also lose detail in the highlights. Similarly, lowering the Crush Blacks can show more detail in the darker end of the image.

paphus

So I continue to be really upset that the renders you get from models bought from the Daz store don't look at all like their store photos (especially models from Daz). It really sucks that Daz and other artitist do not include their lighting and render settings in their models. I do not have the time or expertise to tune 10 different settings and spend hours with lights for a render.

Looking at the lighting affects available in the store, would any of these give renders similar to the renders for Victoria 8 and others?

Perhaps this one?

https://www.daz3d.com/illumination-iray-lights

Can anyone recommend a good **easy to use** presets products for lighting and render settings.

mod edit to remove obscenity

SickleYield

I've covered how to light for skin at length in many different places.  Here's one:

https://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Three-Point-Lighting-In-Iray-598282717

That has a link to my YouTube tutorials, too.

Some HDRs have good enough contrast lighting that you can use them instead of three point lights, but I will strongly argue they are a minority and the default HDR is not one of them.  DimensionTheory has some light probes that work great for this.

ALWAYS TURN OFF THE CAMERA HEAD LAMP IN THE CAMERA'S PARAMETERS.

We're not leaving this out on purpose.  Mine and Fuseling's Beautiful Skin Realism 2017 update literally comes with recommended skin lights and tone mapping, and the original tutorial for the product covers how to three-point light with mesh lights (I now mostly recommend using spotlights with geometry, but it depends on your preference really).  It's just that this is such a necessary thing that we tend to assume people know that nothing is going to look good in the default HDR compared to almost any other bright light rig.

EDIT, P.S.: I feel strongly enough about this that I'm selling an upcoming product that has specific setups for lighting skin plus HDRs I built for that purpose!  (Built, not bought, I mistyped originally.)  But you don't need my product to do that.  You can do it with any set of spotlights and any high-contrast or mid-contrast HDRI.

lamoid_5f20d3e469

Hi SickleYield  

"Mine and Fuseling's Beautiful Skin Realism 2017 update literally comes with recommended skin lights and tone mapping, and the original tutorial for the product covers how to three-point light with mesh lights"

Where is the tutorial of which you speak?  It does not appear to be in your youtube list. I bought "Beautiful Skin Iray Genesis 3 Female(s)" and I cannot figure out how best to use it.  Other questions: What do SO and ST mean?  Why do some of your presets begin with "!" whereas others do not. Who is Jean? Where is the 2017 update located?

Thanks!

AndyS

Hi Paphus,

paphus said:

Can anyone recommend a good **easy to use** presets products for lighting and render settings.

I already asked related to Tween Ryan, why the characters appear way darker compared to the usual environment and other (older) characters long time ago here in the forum.

It is really strange, cause there're some usual environments used in the promos, which we use too with a lot of different other props. So somehow the vendors succeed to get their new characters lighter compared to the environments as we get them under the same circumstances.
But the real reason is the strange skin shader they use with completely physically wrong parameters for the SSS components. There're some different threads here in the forums discussing corrections and better skin settings.

So: It is not the light setup - the skin has to be corrected to fit to your earlier characters / props / environments. -->

paphus

Thanks for the tutorial, I'm sure that if I spent a week sutdying it, and a day settings the dozens of parameters per render I could maybe produce something like the store renders from a model.

But... I don't want some complex tutorial, I want is a link to some render preset or lighting that would let me do all this with just one click. Any suggestions?

(and why don't store models include their render/lighting/whatever else settings to produce the image they use in their store image advertising, seems like misleading advetising?)

SickleYield

paphus said:

Thanks for the tutorial, I'm sure that if I spent a week sutdying it, and a day settings the dozens of parameters per render I could maybe produce something like the store renders from a model.

But... I don't want some complex tutorial, I want is a link to some render preset or lighting that would let me do all this with just one click. Any suggestions?

(and why don't store models include their render/lighting/whatever else settings to produce the image they use in their store image advertising, seems like misleading advetising?)

Well, some do.  Sometimes they can't because they used someone else's lighting product.

Here's the old tutorial for Beautiful Skin's lighting:

EcVh0

paphus said:

Thanks for the tutorial, I'm sure that if I spent a week sutdying it, and a day settings the dozens of parameters per render I could maybe produce something like the store renders from a model.

But... I don't want some complex tutorial, I want is a link to some render preset or lighting that would let me do all this with just one click. Any suggestions?

(and why don't store models include their render/lighting/whatever else settings to produce the image they use in their store image advertising, seems like misleading advetising?)

It's a very funny thing, but most "product" we see in the world isn't near as good as what the "advertisement" shows. I don't think anyone would go for Macdonalds burger if they just take a photo of what they serve

Most of the promo here, sadly, is the same thing, they all consists of the following:

1. Complex, Unnatural Lights: The first thing they do is to light up their product to look appealing to the viewers, and they clearly know that if they put up a render under simple light sources like Sun-Sky Environment, it will definitely not sell because it looks dry and flat and dark as what you get from your simple renders. They tweak around light colors, intensity, position to make the "center of presentation" looks vivid and sharp, grab your eyeballs instantly, the background you see, is simply a prop, and they probably turn off these natural lights (HDRIs, Environments, Emissives) because they just don't look as good under their shaders. Thats fine, but consider that not all of DAZers here are pros, or have hours everyday to study lights and positions but rather throw in an environment and hit render, I would say it's pretty "misleading" or little frustrating when you just don't get your result
2. Photoshop Post-Working: To further make their product appealing, they added in post works, Adjusting skin tones (Maybe?), for example. In the end for them, it's how appealing it is that matters, just like how photographers tweak their photos or cinematographers changes the cinematography of the movie. But the thing is, for photographers and such, they are selling The Image, or The Movie, as a visual product, so they can change it as much as they like because that's what you get when you see the image as well. Unlike here, you get the product instead, so the problem arises: Does the product look good WITHOUT all these post-working and complex lights? The answer sadly for most, is no.

That's why for most of my products, I tend to tell viewers exactly what kind of lights I have used, and I tend to more of a natural light than artificial light sets because I believe that's what most people are trying to use with their renders. At least the complex light part can be solved because you get to recreate the exact same scene, and get very similar result. For post-processing, I guess everyone does it and it's not much of a huge deal unless a lot of changes are made.

I do kinda recommend each product to include at least one non-postprocessed image with light set names down at the corner, but hey I bet I'm gonna upset a lot of people 

For example, the shader promo here for my EcVh0 Iray Skin Shader for Genesis 8 Female(s)  

I stated that only simple light source is used, as in only simple emissive light surfaces in the scene is used, without any random ghost lights or random panes behind camera. This is what I get for my result (with a minor post-processing), and that's what you will get in the same scene, under the same simple light surfaces which you can set up at ease

 

EcVh0

SickleYield said:

paphus said:

Thanks for the tutorial, I'm sure that if I spent a week sutdying it, and a day settings the dozens of parameters per render I could maybe produce something like the store renders from a model.

But... I don't want some complex tutorial, I want is a link to some render preset or lighting that would let me do all this with just one click. Any suggestions?

(and why don't store models include their render/lighting/whatever else settings to produce the image they use in their store image advertising, seems like misleading advetising?)

Well, some do.  Sometimes they can't because they used someone else's lighting product.

Here's the old tutorial for Beautiful Skin's lighting:

Sadly my friend, if a skin needs a specific set to make it look good, I won't really call it a good product I would rather sell it as a light sets because thats what makes the skin looks good

Tho don't think I'm pointing this at you, I have a couple that is exactly the same as this, relying on good lights but I have stepped away from that

EcVh0

AndyS said:

Hi Paphus,

paphus said:

Can anyone recommend a good **easy to use** presets products for lighting and render settings.

I already asked related to Tween Ryan, why the characters appear way darker compared to the usual environment and other (older) characters long time ago here in the forum.

It is really strange, cause there're some usual environments used in the promos, which we use too with a lot of different other props. So somehow the vendors succeed to get their new characters lighter compared to the environments as we get them under the same circumstances.
But the real reason is the strange skin shader they use with completely physically wrong parameters for the SSS components. There're some different threads here in the forums discussing corrections and better skin settings.

So: It is not the light setup - the skin has to be corrected to fit to your earlier characters / props / environments. -->

Nice work!!

One question tho, what makes you realize that she is supposed to be a pale-ish skin character? I thought G/V8 is supposed to be olive-skin character, or something like that

EcVh0

SickleYield said:

 It's just that this is such a necessary thing that we tend to assume people know that nothing is going to look good in the default HDR compared to almost any other bright light rig.

Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but are you stating that nothing looks good under default HDR?

I strongly disagree that, there's only a bad product that does not work under default HDR, not a bad default HDR that does not work on the product

EcVh0

paphus said:

So I continue to be really upset that the renders you get from models bought from the Daz store don't look at all like their store photos (especially models from Daz). It really sucks that Daz and other artitist do not include their lighting and render settings in their models. I do not have the time or expertise to tune 10 different settings and spend hours with lights for a render.

Looking at the lighting affects available in the store, would any of these give renders similar to the renders for Victoria 8 and others?

Perhaps this one?

https://www.daz3d.com/illumination-iray-lights

Can anyone recommend a good **easy to use** presets products for lighting and render settings.

mod edit to remove obscenity

It's quite funny how this thread is revived after nearly a year and nothing in between

Anyhow check out this thread

on skin realism and how lighting isn't the most important thing

EcVh0

lamoid_5f20d3e469 said:

 Other questions: What do SO and ST mean?

SO stands for Scatter Only and ST stands for Scatter and Transmit - I believe

AndyS

Hi EcVh0,

EcVh0 said:

One question tho, what makes you realize that she is supposed to be a pale-ish skin character? I thought G/V8 is supposed to be olive-skin character, or something like that

the outcome somehow corresponds to the diffuse jpg. Now you easily can make her darker using the diffuse intensity or add some more contrast by intensifying the translucency strength (more intense epidermis).
I compared her with the numerous characters I use (G1 - G3) and found it a nice fitting color for a young lady spending most of the time out of the sun.

And please have a look: The original setting almost doesn't provide the natural shine-through of thin body parts; although they used "scatter & transmit".
That picture was done with the same light setup (two more or less soft spotlights on 45° from both sides, render "Scene only").
Hope, that answers the question of Paphus, too.

fastbike1

@EcVh0    "Heavy Photoshop Post-Working: To further make their product appealing, they added in heavy post works"

Are you sure about that? I am under the impression that DAZ does not allow "heavy postwork" in promos.

You own promos show "advertising style lights". Frankly, the term "natural lights" doesn't make any sense in this context, particularly with regard to "emissives". An emissive light in Studio is no different than a photometric spot with geometry.

FWIW, Victoria 8's promos don't look olive skinned to me.

 

nonesuch00

This is such a recurring theme. 

Thankfully for me I know enough to fanagle it now somewhat closer to the ad copy but I'm really just guessing at what they've done in those renders. It is silly there is no good set of DAZ documentation on this very basic thing. Dorking around with the Surfaces settings seems to be the last thing a paying hobbyist would be expected to be doing having bought a top of the line DAZ human model if they aren't interesting in creating a brand new character but that's what we are told to do.

The other thing being told to dork around with is with light and no disagreement on that here but who are hobbyists to learn from when there are so much contradictory advice in the forums? It is the most common recurring technical topic in the forums with lots of contradicting approaches and products, paid and free. in the DAZ Store and the DAZ forums. It is the single most important thing hobbyists can do to create a good render or a mediocre render. Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download.

Come on, how to properly light a scene should not be going to change with each new version of DAZ Studio or with each reworking of the supplied skin materials for a new Genesis generation.

EcVh0

fastbike1 said:

@EcVh0    "Heavy Photoshop Post-Working: To further make their product appealing, they added in heavy post works"

Are you sure about that? I am under the impression that DAZ does not allow "heavy postwork" in promos.

Actually my apologies, I over-exaggerated the "Heavy" bit, I will correct that. What I don't understand is, you can create a good lighting effect by complex lights, but how can you change skin tones so dramatically? I do not believe V8 was pale when she was loaded into my scene

 

You own promos show "advertising style lights". Frankly, the term "natural lights" doesn't make any sense in this context, particularly with regard to "emissives". An emissive light in Studio is no different than a photometric spot with geometry.

FWIW, Victoria 8's promos don't look olive skinned to me.

To my definition which I totally forgot to mention, "natural light" is any lights that "make sense" of appearing in a scene, for example ceiling lights, lamp lights, or even camera light itself, so an realistically placed photometric spot with geometry is just as natural as an emissive in the scene.

The lights that doesn't make sense to exist in a scene would be called forced lights to me, things such as ghost lights in front of your character, to the side of your character, or three point plane lights coming out from nowhere floating above the ground sort of things. These are quite common in a complex light set to make a particular object look good, but it is forced because it does not belong into the scene

Hope I explained myself a bit better this time

EcVh0

nonesuch00 said:

This is such a recurring theme. 

Thankfully for me I know enough to fanagle it now somewhat closer to the ad copy but I'm really just guessing at what they've done in those renders. It is silly there is no good set of DAZ documentation on this very basic thing. Dorking around with the Surfaces settings seems to be the last thing a paying hobbyist would be expected to be doing having bought a top of the line DAZ human model if they aren't interesting in creating a brand new character but that's what we are told to do.

I believe lots of DAZers here doesn't even have time to do all those complex tweaks and to set up lights for renders, so the best thing to give them is something that you would hit load, hit render and boom, amazing render. Things like that only happened to me once, and it's not in Daz Someone shared a "head" with materials somewhere and you load in and holy moly there is the best I have ever seen.

I'm kind of trying to create things like this, where you can actually just hit load and hit render, but it is so damn hard

The other thing being told to dork around with is with light and no disagreement on that here but who are hobbyists to learn from when there are so much contradictory advice in the forums? It is the most common recurring technical topic in the forums with lots of contradicting approaches and products, paid and free. in the DAZ Store and the DAZ forums. It is the single most important thing hobbyists can do to create a good render or a mediocre render. Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download.

Come on, how to properly light a scene should not be going to change with each new version of DAZ Studio or with each reworking of the supplied skin materials for a new Genesis generation.

I agree with you here, it is such a long, ongoing topics not just here but literally in every single 3D forums.

The really funny thing, is how people tend to create a skin materal, then create light set to support it when it should be going the other way around. Given a light set, no matter how simple it is (as long as it's lighting properly that is) a skin material should be able to fit into this particular scene without adding extra lights to support it

 

 

EcVh0

AndyS said:

Hi EcVh0,

EcVh0 said:

One question tho, what makes you realize that she is supposed to be a pale-ish skin character? I thought G/V8 is supposed to be olive-skin character, or something like that

the outcome somehow corresponds to the diffuse jpg. Now you easily can make her darker using the diffuse intensity or add some more contrast by intensifying the translucency strength (more intense epidermis).
I compared her with the numerous characters I use (G1 - G3) and found it a nice fitting color for a young lady spending most of the time out of the sun.

And please have a look: The original setting almost doesn't provide the natural shine-through of thin body parts; although they used "scatter & transmit".
That picture was done with the same light setup (two more or less soft spotlights on 45° from both sides, render "Scene only").
Hope, that answers the question of Paphus, too.

Yup, I just realized it last night that diffuse weight does change skin color a bit, guess it's not useless afterall

And yeah! I can actually see the orange parts going through the parts of the body! It's absolutely amazing

nonesuch00

EcVh0 said:

nonesuch00 said:

This is such a recurring theme. 

Thankfully for me I know enough to fanagle it now somewhat closer to the ad copy but I'm really just guessing at what they've done in those renders. It is silly there is no good set of DAZ documentation on this very basic thing. Dorking around with the Surfaces settings seems to be the last thing a paying hobbyist would be expected to be doing having bought a top of the line DAZ human model if they aren't interesting in creating a brand new character but that's what we are told to do.

I believe lots of DAZers here doesn't even have time to do all those complex tweaks and to set up lights for renders, so the best thing to give them is something that you would hit load, hit render and boom, amazing render. Things like that only happened to me once, and it's not in Daz Someone shared a "head" with materials somewhere and you load in and holy moly there is the best I have ever seen.

I'm kind of trying to create things like this, where you can actually just hit load and hit render, but it is so damn hard

The other thing being told to dork around with is with light and no disagreement on that here but who are hobbyists to learn from when there are so much contradictory advice in the forums? It is the most common recurring technical topic in the forums with lots of contradicting approaches and products, paid and free. in the DAZ Store and the DAZ forums. It is the single most important thing hobbyists can do to create a good render or a mediocre render. Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download.

Come on, how to properly light a scene should not be going to change with each new version of DAZ Studio or with each reworking of the supplied skin materials for a new Genesis generation.

I agree with you here, it is such a long, ongoing topics not just here but literally in every single 3D forums.

The really funny thing, is how people tend to create a skin materal, then create light set to support it when it should be going the other way around. Given a light set, no matter how simple it is (as long as it's lighting properly that is) a skin material should be able to fit into this particular scene without adding extra lights to support i

EcVh0 said:

 

I've liking this new expanded Blender 'fstop' range available soon for rendering. No sure what DAZ Studio does in that regard but it does seems that the range from lightest light to darkest dark is much compressed.

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/secret-ingredient-photorealism

Read that article and you read the author taking about the same lighting cheats that I've read others suggest to do in DAZ to make good renders and that absolutely make no sense to someone that is simply wanting to be artistic and not wanting to learn and make up 102 kludgy lighting tricks to make something that usually winds up looking like a fleet of lit UFOs are arbout to land nearby.

father1776

brightness problems usually are centered around 'light sources in scene' or camera settings or render settings in that order.

my usual work flow (sort of)

1. get the scene the way I want it

2. turn everything invis.

3. turn one figure back on

4. get ambent light as good as I can ( spot render to check)

5. bring back objects one at a time and add any light emmisions coming from them (spot render to check)

6. everything on, quick partial render to find any trouble spots (add/subtract/modify a few small lights to tweek)

7. last spot render

8. render for real and go make a sandwich.

thats me

 

EcVh0

 

nonesuch00 said:

I've liking this new expanded Blender 'fstop' range available soon for rendering. No sure what DAZ Studio does in that regard but it does seems that the range from lightest light to darkest dark is much compressed.

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/secret-ingredient-photorealism

Read that article and you read the author taking about the same lighting cheats that I've read others suggest to do in DAZ to make good renders and that absolutely make no sense to someone that is simply wanting to be artistic and not wanting to learn and 

I just had time to read through this, man, that tutorial is absolutely amazing! I really wish there is more of us who goes "You know what, xxxx fancy light sets we are going to do the exact same thing under natural lightings and no cheatings, Iray is no worse than theirs!", then we might be able to move a lot faster than what we are progressing right now 

 

make up 102 kludgy lighting tricks to make something that usually winds up looking like a fleet of lit UFOs are arbout to land nearby.

HAHAHAHA this got me laughing so hard, lit UFOs are one of the amazing things to see in every single renders isn't it  since there has been this long debate of if they actually exists XD

 

And a good news to tell you is that I have decided to include Render setting informations for the promos of my Katarina (Well you know those ones that doesn't include other peoples scene), and possibly scene build ups as well so you can just follow through and get exactly what I get 

EcVh0

father1776 said:

 

8. render for real and go make a sandwich.

Do you always make a sandwich whenever you render?  Man that's gotta be a lot of sandwich done for the year

Tobor

fastbike1 said:

An emissive light in Studio is no different than a photometric spot with geometry.

Small FYI here: Without an IES profile, emissives in Iray produce only diffuse light, with little or no specular component. Even with a geometry a spotlight can contain a specular component because its rays can be focused. Iray discerns the difference in diffuse, glossy, and specular light components, and in fact, using lightpath expressions (LPEs) you can create separate renders each with their own component (http://blog.irayrender.com/post/76948894710/compositing-with-light-path-expressions).

The notion here is that shaders are set up to interact with these components in different ways, and therefore, the type of lighting can (and does) matter. Whether or not it's possible to create a single shader that looks good in all lighting conditions (which I feel is doubtful), it's certainly true some shaders look terrific given specific lighting types.

As an artistic representation, there is nothing wrong with the three-point lighting setup, as this was invented way before any of us were born -- or even our great-great-great-grandfathers. The masters have used this type of lighting for centuries, and with photography, was adopted as a traditional studio technique. Our brains accept the scene because it mimics a window-lit studio: the main light source on one side (i.e. through a window), a returning reflective fill from an opposite wall, and a weaker back fill to provide separation from the background. I've just described a typical portrait painting setup that has been in use for centuries. Feel free to tell da Vinci his lighting setup sucks.

The nortion that light sources have to be from actual light ignores the laws of physics. In 3D rendering, we choose to rely on lighting rigs instead reflected light because of ray tracing economy: renders are much faster with direct light.

fastbike1

@nonesuch00  " Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download"

Find any book about photographic or stage lighting. It will tell you enough of what you need to know for light placement in Studio. Lighting values and colors will change for each scene. It's not a simple subject.

@EcVh0   "I'm kind of trying to create things like this, where you can actually just hit load and hit render, but it is so damn hard"

You'll never be completely successful as long as you believe that lighting doesn't/shouldn't have a big impact on the appearance of skin.

 

nonesuch00

fastbike1 said:

@nonesuch00  " Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download"

Find any book about photographic or stage lighting. It will tell you enough of what you need to know for light placement in Studio. Lighting values and colors will change for each scene. It's not a simple subject.

@EcVh0   "I'm kind of trying to create things like this, where you can actually just hit load and hit render, but it is so damn hard"

You'll never be completely successful as long as you believe that lighting doesn't/shouldn't have a big impact on the appearance of skin.

 

So now, go buy or check out other expertise? I'll get me a phD in physics while I'm at it. Nah, DAZ and the PAs are selling me their expertise. 

EcVh0

fastbike1 said:

@nonesuch00  " Yet there is no concise, professional, and technically researched and documented PDF companion document on lighting supplied with DAZ Studio that ought to be supplied as part of the DAZ Studio download"

Find any book about photographic or stage lighting. It will tell you enough of what you need to know for light placement in Studio. Lighting values and colors will change for each scene. It's not a simple subject.

@EcVh0   "I'm kind of trying to create things like this, where you can actually just hit load and hit render, but it is so damn hard"

You'll never be completely successful as long as you believe that lighting doesn't/shouldn't have a big impact on the appearance of skin.

It does have an impact, but I believe that it's not a standard to determine the quality of a skin

if you have a good skin, it will look like skin under even the proper shittest light environment you can find, might be dark, might be barely visible, but it will be skin-like, not plastic like dolls because the light isn't shining on it