Chavfister.....

I'll be straight......without any gloss.....

Portraits of people are hard -hands down. There's no getting away from that fact regardless of how well you know them or how much reference you have either. I've been there and am still doing it.

Before even attempting half of what you are, stop, sit back and have a good look.

I think you need to seriously tweak that head mesh, the ears are so out of place, and the thickness of the eye lids is too much. the outside of the lids you have there looks like the eyes are too far back or pushed too much toward the center of the head....theres lots of dark there, looks like a 20mm thick eyelid. If you could post an image of your Dad side by side with this then it would be good to get a better comparison.

You spoke of proportions and all that talk earlier in the post....so use that knowledge and apply it. At the moment I'm not seeing it.

Lighting wise -'GI off an HDRI sphere'. Forget it - It doesnt matter right now, you need to see what needs fixing before adding the technical problems of GI, FG, VRAY,Mental Ray or whatever. As its all irrelevant when something isn't correct. The fact is you can throw all the bells and whistles of any 3d package at this but if its not right....

I have never seen a pic of your Dad but I'll put money on the fact this isn't close -possibly a resemblance but not close. I could be wrong......

So as a piece of advice, keep it simple until its 'there' or as near as yo can get it. Then build it up. Attempting photoreal images are hard as I said, and people like me will see the probs.

I could bang on for ages about this and that but I think its just necessary to be honest and point this stuff out so you dont become completely blinded by the nicer comments in the post.


cheers
Jay