Thanks dave and everybody! I've actually collected all the Maya UV tutorials way back (yep...including the Marlene Dietrich tut by Max the Indonesian artist...and of course...the Joker tut by that Iranian dude) and setup a couple of UVs myself but I didn't realise that you actually need to use UVs to set up a photorealistic face. I know about all those colour , bump, transparency, specular maps and stuff and doing everything in Photoshop but that would mean I would not be able to use misss_fast_skin. I mean, how can you use SSS if the texture you're using is actually a Photoshop TGA or TIFF file ?

However, its much, much easier to do eyebrows and lips in Pshop (with brushes). I might the Julian Mortimer way by baking to PShop, layering, doing the color, bump and specular and then UV-ing them back in Maya... :-)

I'm kind of confused and in conflict here because if the texture maps are all from Photoshop and UV'd on to the Maya mesh, when do we then use miss_fast_skin (it has its own SSS colouring mechanism for epidermal, subdermal and backskin) and when do we use PaintFX for the brows and the beard and the stubble? From what I have read, you don't use fast_skin if you're using color maps for PShop and you don't use PaintFX for the brows but use brushes and bump maps from PShop instead. But fast_skin is kinda vital to get realistic skin, you know...

But I'll try doing it the UV way (because the brows and lips will be much easier to do and finer texturing can be done on the eye edges). I guess then, Maya Hair can be put on the top scalp with a sort of hemisphere hair emitter.

For the eye brows, I'm still not sure whether to use Photoshop brushes, PaintFX, Maya Hair or Maya Fur ? Looks like they're all eligible candidates for great eyebrows :-). Also thinking how I can still keep my fast_skin if I were to use UV and Photoshop.