I'd highly recommend 'beauty box' does everything you need with proper realism http://digitalanarchy.com/beautyVID/main.html

Ok by "within Vegas" I meant without having to buy anything else, I use a filter so rarely ( I shoot Doc's for PBS) it wouldn't be worth it. Thanks for the suggestions though.

You may find a look you like by experimenting with the included "Soft Contrast" fx.
You won't find a selective way to attack the lines and wrinkles as you would with purchased plugins, but there are Virtual Dub and AVISynth scripts (all free) that may be able to help you if you want to take the time to learn and experiment with another app.

The Fill Light fx may help you a bit too, if midrange shadows are too harsh on the facial features.

Edit - I generally don't like applying a blur to try to achieve what a soft con or diffusion lens filter would do, but depending on your footage, selecting "reduce interlace flicker" (I think that's the name - or something very similar) in the media properties might give you enough softness that the shot doesn't appear like you missed the focus.

Lower the resolution of the output. SD does wonders in hiding visual "flaws" of real life. :)

Well I've tried a bunch of Vegas pro effects and none of them do a very good job of softening faces and de-emphasizing wrinkles. However, like a previous poster said NewBlue Video Essentials IV does include a selective touchup blurry windows tool that works excellent. I downloaded an example image for the previously mentioned digitalanarchy site and the NewBluefx plugin works equally well.

The most difficult part of "digital makeup" is creating the mask for which to apply your filters. The easiest way is to use the chroma key to create a mask using skin color (instead of green or blue). If there are other similar backgroud tones it can be tough to get the correct mask. You may have to apply a animated mask using event pan/crop to mask these similar colors prior to the chroma key filter.

Once your mask looks good a blur and perhaps a small bit of glow along with any secondary color correction can be applied.

This is pretty much all these other aftermarket plugins do, but make it simpler at the interface, so you don't have to think. Sometimes they are too simple and the results are less than stellar, because there is a lack of control there. I have had problem footage where these plugins could not isolate the skintones from the background.

good luck.

BCC Smooth Tone works pretty well. here is my Boris TV tutorial on it.

[url=

~jr

Another vote for Beauty Box here. Miles ahead of the NewBlueFX skin smoother.

A de-ager is basically a keyer which keys and blurs flesh tones. I think I could do it with two layers by blurring the bottom layer and chroma keying out the face on the top layer. You'd probably want to use 32 bit mode so as to minimize any lines at the transitions.