Help! SSS Skin shader looks blotchy under any lighting in an open scene, regardless of Shading Rate

Dolbomir

I'm running into a weird lighting issue while playing around with the brothers for growing up for genesis male 2, as evident in the attached render sample.

If the environment is open, their skin starts to look all distorted.

I've tried UE2 as a light source, UE2 with area light, advanced ambient with surface light, and a set of two distant lights--all produce the same issue.

I've tried lowering shading rate down, which seems to diminish this effect, but not by much.

What am I missing?

seeing as it takes 5-10 min to render one of these samples on my new machine, I figured it'd be easier to ask here than tweak every single possible option to see what I'm missing >.<</p>

thanks!

EDIT: sorry if this has been asked before (and probably often)--I tried searching, and the closest I found was more about lowering the shading rate, which did not help in this case.

EDITx2: I tried moving the main figures into a smaller room, with exact same UE2 + area light setup and they look fine O.o

Is the problem here with the render engine getting confused because it has no walls to bounce light off of into their skin or some such?

Can't fit the whole composition into it though. Plus it looks weird as a scene in a small room.

EDITxSomeMore: Re-titled the post to hopefully make the issue clearer

EDIT(last?): bleh. I give up. Used the other texture set, and it seems to work at least with some lights in open areas. I guess, I'll stick to that.