In the course of doing renders I've learned two cheats that seem to apply in general.
1. Dark, high contrast shots add to the realism.
2. Men are easier to do. They have larger pores, whiskers and more craggy faces in general. Those details engage the eye. The character is also supposed to have bad skin.
All textures are in 4k. The avatar was first made in CC3 and then tweaked in CC4. Digital Soul and the enhanced expression pack was used to get his smarmy-meanness, just so. Textures were made in Skingen and the beard and brows were created and tweaked in Beard and Brow builder.
In addition:
3. Playing with depth of field really does help sell it.
4. I emulated a long exposure 35mm shot with something like good old fashioned kodachrome film. I like the richness of the colors.
I need to work on the eye textures a bit. However, I present Beiru as a near perfect, photorealistic render. In the novel, he's a smuggler, pimp, pirate, slaver and drug dealer with a little criminal fiefdom.
