I have been using the more modern settings so long I wasn't sure what to suggest, so I went back to using things the way we did 10 years ago, which I'm pretty sure is how you're using them. And there I found all the problems why we don't do things that way.

Here's a setup using an Image Based Light (IBL), Ambient Occlusion (AO) for shadowing, no gamma correction (GC), and no Indirect Diffuse Light (IDL).

Observe the artifact in the armpit and elbow. This is not glow. It is a missing AO shadow. AO is not functioning correctly here. The skin is not brighter than other skin, but rather the SHADOW is not DARKER like it should be.

I could not find any value for the AO settings that corrected this. I'm not surprised. The AO function was written LONG before scatter was. I doubt SM even cared if scatter didn't work very well with AO. Anybody interested in realism enough to use scatter would also NOT be using AO.

Now - let's more forward in time. Instead of AO (which I turn off) I use IDL. And for the thousands time, IBL + IDL works great - nobody is permitted to suggest this is a bad combination. It is a good combination. We may prefer an EnvSphere instead of IBL but IBL in and of itself DOES WORK RIGHT with IDL.

With this setup, the shadowing problems in crevices are completely gone. However, overall the lighting is incorrect because I'm not yet using GC. Let's add GC.

There - a proper result is achieved merely by clicking two checkboxes.

So - stop doing things the way we did in 2007. You have scatter, GC, and IDL, all of which were added specifically to FIX problems. So you should use them to fix those problems.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)