Leg colour issues with Skin Builder Pro3

kyoto kid

..I've been noticing that the legs of characters on which I use SBP3 tend to render darker than other skin surfaces. It looks almost as if I have two different skin textures/tones on the same character. At first I thought it was due to lighting so as a test I replaced the spotlights with several large plane ghost lights to create more uniform lighting, yet the legs still looked darker than the upper torso arms and face. It was particularly evident on an albino character which made the skin look very unnatural as albinos have no surface epidermal (or hair) pigmentation and at most have a light pink hue from the underlying skin layers.

On closer examination I noticed a "mottling"effect that was prevalent on the thighs and shins which didn't change no matter which SBP setting combination I used.  Thinking it may have been a holdover from the base skin the character originally stated with, I turned off all skin shaders in the surfaces tab (setting them to white) built a skin, but the mottling still appeared in the test render.  I even checked to make sure no overlays were in effect which may have caused this (there weren't).  This means the "texture" is part of the actual SBP skin.  For the albino character I ended up going back to Beautiful Skins for G3F using the pink G3F base (no maps) and having to do a tonne of manual adjustments (still a WIP) with images of albinos up on the other display as a guide.  Same for my more fair skinned characters (like Leela).  Having to perform a lot of tedious manual adjustment is something I hoped would have been a thing of the past.

Any tips on how to fix this as I am totally out of ideas (spent nearly 16 hours on this Wednesday)?  Hand painting the details on the texture map out using a 2D programme is not an option as I no longer have a steady hand for that anymore and using the Gamma adjustment in the Image Editor throws other details off.

Zev0

Can you show a pic example of the issue?

kyoto kid

...here's a test I recently did the other week of young Leela and her mother. Notice that both characters' legs look a bit darker than their arms and upper torso. 

I'll post one of the albino character tomorrow (or guess now later today when I get up)

Toonces

Are any of the seams visible?

kyoto kid

...no. none at all. Can't post and image as it would most liikely be against TOS.

Zev0

You sure it isn't lighting casting shadows? I made the tones as even as possible. See attachment rendered in default startup with no additional lights.

kyoto kid

...like I mentioned I created and placed ghost lights (5 total) in the scene each one large enough to to create diffuse light without hard shadows (two vertical to the floor plane on each side, one in front and one back [the latter at a lower intensity], also vertical, and one above that was parallel to the floor to produce as even an amount of lighting as I could. In spite of this the les still looked darker than the arms and upper body.

I was using the "Pale" skin setting at 100% for the albino character with the scattering layers set to a light pink which is characteristic of albino skin.  The character kept coming out more beige with darker tones on the legs.

Cooking another render ,will post when finished.

kyoto kid

..OK to get even more uniform lighting I ditched the planes and enclosed the character in a sphere with an emissive shader set to 6500°K and 20,000 cd/m^2 with no floor plane or backdrop to cause shadows so the light should be totally uniform as it is coming from all directions.

Tonemap settings were ISO 100, f8, and 1/50 with a resultant exposure value of 11.64. 

I also used a neutral grey shader on the basicwear so as not to draw the eye to it. 

As you can see, the skin is more beige with no hint of the pink translucency layer. I also attached a closeup screenshot of the legs as well as a photo of an actual albino.