Since there's no action in this forum, I thought I'd post some cool links.
SIGGRAPH is the be-all end-all annual event in computer graphics. The latest technology is shown here, and a few years later, it starts to show up in commercial applications.
Here is a link of all the technical papers presented at SIGGRAPH 2008.
http://kesen.huang.googlepages.com/sig2008.html
Some of it is too technical for me to understand, but the demo videos speak for themselves.
All kinds of stuff - painting, motion capture, rigging, realtime global illumination, soft body dynamics, etc... check it out!