ocatne Render - the interactive physically based render engine

Octane Render is the world's first GPU based, un-biased, physically based renderer. What does that mean? It uses the video card in your computer to render photorealistic results fast...really fast. This allows the user to create stunning works in a fraction of the time of traditional CPU based renderers.
Link
thanks to Guy for the link

Mari - new 3D painting/texturing tool from the foundry

Mari is a brand new 3D texture painting tool from The Foundry. Originally developed at Weta Digital to handle the massively complex, highly detailed look development work demanded by Avatar, Mari was designed as a full 3D paint tool with a responsiveness and feature-set that puts even the best dedicated 2D paint systems to shame. Mari is extremely scalable, coping easily with an obsessive level of detail literally tens of thousands of textures quickly and elegantly.







thanks to Tzachi....

82 CG Superheros, Villains, and Iconic Movie and Video Game Characters

Everyone must be in need of some sort of escape from the real world, because while searching through the net I found a wide range of amazing works based on movie and video game characters, as well as comic book superheros and villains! Some of these are better than I could have imagined, and some push the characters’ attitudes and looks in directions you would have never imagined! Absolutely brilliant!!
Link

Allen McKay - VFX tutorials

Allan Mckay is sharing some great tutorials on his website, Allan is like a guru for VFX and fumefx,

Link

FumeFX Tutorials

Realflow forum - fumeFx tutorials