Adventures across the 3rd dimension

It seems like no other person in any video has this texture problem so I set about trying to solve it myself.
For reasons beyond my understanding I ended up having to scale the procedural noise texture along the Z axis in the mapping tab to stop it going all streaky. I wondered if I'd inadvertently scaled the model at the Object level but I checked the numerical values and they were all at 1.0 so I don't know why I was required to scale the texture in that way. It's a mystery.

But my lumpy guy has some smaller intentional lumps now to approximate skin pores... but they don't really look like skin pores. It looks a bit like stone in places.
This time I haven't cheated by tweaking the screenshot, this one is a proper render using Cycles, which is why it has additional completely unwanted grain.

 

Colour is looking a little pale and washed out but I don't know if that is down to some shader settings or the lighting setup, which is a bit different from the previous pic. I'm also a bit annoyed and baffled at the lack of any AO shadows in the creases around the nose, the fold down the cheek and the lips. I've messed about with the AO render settings and nothing seemed to change at all.
Also the topology of the model is appalling now so I even though I did save it this time I saved it as a separate file so that I still have the untextured one with over a million polygons if I want to do more sculpting.

EDIT: After a bit of tweaking and fiddling with LOTS of settings (light, subsurface, specularity, etc) it seems like the texture works better as a displacement rather than a bump map but that does decrease performance somewhat...

 

Charlotte wrote:

I should have gone to something called Tabata...

*googles*
Looks like hard work. That's probably why I haven't heard of it.

Valence wrote:

I'm also a bit annoyed and baffled at the lack of any AO shadows in the creases around the nose, the fold down the cheek and the lips. I've messed about with the AO render settings and nothing seemed to change at all.

 

Oh, great. There's apparently an ambient occlusion node. More nodes!
And it plugs into Base Colour?? I've already got two things plugged in there through a mix node, how can I fit that there too?
I'll have to work it out on another day.

Now with some AO (but not at much as I'd like  ) plus some irises in the eyes and a crease to the forehead (still just vertex painting for both those.) And with an area light so I didn't have to punch the levels...

 

Still not enough darkness under the brow for my tastes. Wonder if that's a geometry issue that needs more sculpting.

Well,  this annoyed me  with all of its realistic goodness.
(EDIT: and if Reddit doesn't load in then  this  may be a better link.)
And here I am struggling to get a nostril to not be a glowy red colour.
I also experimented with the particle hair system the other day and the result was the stuff of comedy. Terrible mocking comedy.
I guess that's another tutorial I need to watch. And rewatch.