CG Hero: chasing photorealism

CG character design ... sophisticated render: uploaded at 2000 pixels:
please DO see it full size! 

Chasing photorealism: depth of field, a single light source, film grain, you name it. This guy is pretty impressive, and if I had to make the call ... I do believe this render is a candidate for the best work I've ever been able to wrangle. Sophisticated. Here's a closer look, a detail crop:

It really has the look of a still from a movie. You take a second look and think, "What did I miss?"

I've got ONE light on this scene. Just one. The venous map is on the figure; the face is less than perfect (not pretty: very human -- a new face, designed for this project. Body designed for this project too). The focus is "off" just the tiniest bit, to fool the eye into accepting this as not a digital creation. This time, rather than doing Gaussian blur in Photoshop, in post work, I turned on DOF and did it in the original render --

Not a Lux Render! Just a raytrace ...  not a Genesis figure either. Oooold fashioned Michael 4, in DAZ Studio 3. 😀

Yep. I'll be coming back to this character!