Face

*sighs heavily and enviously* Adam, sorry for the indiscreet question, but which settings did you tweak. I would like to deal with daz3d materials - but the lessons are still not working well ...

Good mornin..What should I say. em...He shaved well. You can now see his blackheads.

@ADAM

The Liu & Jiu linked are likely (I believe even stated in the Liu case) rendered in Maya (Arnold). [Edit: Per editorial on Jiu, "The current image was rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 4 with Real-Time Rendering."]
It's a pretty tough thing to compare a Maya [or other] render to a DAZ Iray render. Even on DAZ Iray's best day, it's not going to stand up to [something like] Arnold on it's worst.
I believe what you have here is a render at the peak of DAZs capabilities. I've done my very best with DAZ, stock, no postwork, and it comes nowhere close to the base of capabilities with other, high-priced render engines. Arnold realism is simply next level. Many times that doesn't even have to come down to an artist or their skill level to crank out brilliant and incomparably photo-realistic images. If even attempting such a feat with DAZ Iray, the very best you can do is start with the highest level of shaders/MATs, and use the tricks and tools to go from there to try to get to realism.

On and slightly off topic, I've found the original Victoria 8.1 to be a highly underrated model and series of MATs/shaders/upgrades. The article here outlines the creation of V8.1, and the original artist and process to get there. For those who haven't already, it's a really good read with stunning examples of what the Model can be (rendered, of course, with Arnold in Maya - the former link of which I find almost cruel to host and post on a head page of the DAZ website, as it was for a time before they redid the V8.1 introduction URL, but, yeah). I've gone away from V8.1 over time since its release, as I have so much invested in G8 models and keep going back and tweaking them. But the MAT upgrades to 8.1 UVs is legit, and the results are there in the renders, I have to admit. I've made some attempts in DAZ at emulating Hyeseon Oh's Maya lighting setup in the main/final head-shot/portrait. Greatly, even on it's own as a singular, standalone image, it has had me tediously and slavishly pouring over my portrait scene, and educating myself in real-time on lighting and setup - both amounts and placements - before going down SSS and skin-tweak road to try to come up with something believable and ..."close" to the Maya-effect.
It won't ever happen, of course. The render engines are too dissimilar. But striving for a level of perfection unachievable within DAZ... still squeezes better results from DAZ. So there's that. (I guess the only thing left would be contacting the artist to get more input. But, would they even bother test-rendering out in DAZ to arrive at ideal conditions? How much time would THEY put into arriving at Maya-comparable results?)

Obviously it's not an "easy" thing. Often you work and work on a scene, a skin, a light, a camera. Mostly "nope"ing along with side by side comparisons until it looks ...not "nope" anymore (if that's a process).
I find it so odd that every scene/char/MAT is so very different, and can often demand such a different, individual approach when lighting and rendering, and skin/shader tweaking. I just have to believe it comes down to the render engine. (Not a finger point at DAZ, so much, just a guess.)

Anyway, I've strayed.
Ups to your renders and techniques. And honor to your DAZ tenacity (DAZnacity?) to get there. I relate to your pain.

First off, you've done an excellent job getting that level of detail in your image, great job.
My only comment is that the skin is too reddish for my liking. In fact virtually all the Daz skins look far too red for me.... hope it's not just my monitor LOL.
I did a few tweaks to saturation and colour balance, hope you don't mind, to remove some of the redness. Perhaps it's not the way you intended it to look but it looks a little more realistic IMHO, an alternative version. Cheers Adam.

Often can arrive at a toned down or pale effect via translucency, of course.
But, of course, that often tends to sacrifice SSS effect.

The "perfect" skins, for me, usually have a more pale tone, but without sacrificing translucency amount.
If I can find a skin map that isn't so saturated to begin with that it can be dialed up to the .75 to .85 range, and still not be too red or too tan, then I find it's pretty great to deal with at many levels, in general.

Lots of base maps - especially in the early days - were all over the place, color wise. Legs were (and sometimes still can be) crazy red relative to the rest of the skin (torso, arms, face). Things seem to be even-ing out, generally, with better overall balance and control-ability, and more realistic highlights. These days if I have a skin that transitions so much between head to toe that way, I just walk away from it. I'm done photoshoping before I even preview and start to render. Too many other good/even skins out there.

<< Also too lazy to deal, and learn something new (Maya - but doing occasional importing for render testing). DAZ, for all its "faults", still does what I need it to do - in one place/interface that I know well enough to get along, or pretend so. I don't even like postworking if I can help it. If I can get the depth I want from an Iray render alone, I don't touch it after. (Big sinner according to many, but I'm ok with many of the results.)
For example, in the above, might be possible to achieve same with light photometrics tweaking alone [Luminous Flux (Lumen) & Temperature (K)]. And if/when I can do that to something acceptable I leave it.