Soft shadows in Iray -- solved; and "an ordinary bloke" for a change

Today's challenge was tougher than yesterday's "glam" shot of a girl ... you can't hide behind makeup or fancy hair, or shimmering fabric, or costuming -- I wanted an "ordinary bloke," not somebody who's drop-dead beautiful. Okay, he's built, but he doesn't like like a movie star --

-- in other words, there is nothing to divert the eye, and anything not-believable in the render would jump out and bite. So I went through about 100 test renders to get to this point, and I have two spotlights (key and fill) on this, in addition to a verrrry subtle environment IBL light. This is the Michael 8 skinmap, and Dae's bright blue eyes, but I designed the face from scratch deliberately to be a bit older and a lot more "ordinary." I wanted a guy who looks about 35; and none of the stock characters seem to unpack with any years on them; you have to get in there, and add them -- done. Next: second challenge for the day:

Create soft shadows. Suuuure, it's easy to get Iray to render dramatic or "interesting" shadows. As soon as you set a key light and crank on some serious "lumens," you'll get fabulous shadows (and if you don't, it means your environment light is so high, it's just filling them in. Try turning it off -- set all values to 0, test again, and see what happens). But supposing you want lovely soft lights. What now?

Okay, it's not a secret. Here's how you do it:

Any new spotlight is automatically created as a point, and its shadows are going to be hard. But if you go into the "Area" parameter and change the "Light Geometry" to Disc, and then make the Diameter quite large, the shadows magically soften up. The bigger the disk, the softer the shadows. Phew! Now --

Challenge three, however, was not solved today ... I gave up and opted for the Photoshop fix, because I'm tired and I basically want to get away from the screen for the day. This is the Michael 8 skinmap, which looks a treat -- from a distance. But when you get very close to it --

The torso surface texture is "overcooked." I turned OFF the normal mapping, and played in the Surfaces tab till I ran out of things to try -- no joy (yet). If/when I get this question sorted, I'll tell you how. But for the moment, I just airbrushed it in PS to get the "orange-peel" effect to soften up. Hmm. Later on, or tomorrow, when I'm not so tired, I'll use this same character, morphs, pose, lights and camera, but I'll put a different skinmap on him and re-render this, just out of curiosity. Say tuned. Next thing I want to try is some SF ... textures on a vehicle, chrome, costumes, and FX in Iray. Tomorrow, I hope!