A few tidbits…
Seems you are all very busy beta testing Lightwave v9….
I’m really overloaded too, surrounded by work & projects, sorry for the blackout 
-Render pal is a very nice render management system, plus workstation version is free, download it HERE
-A very nice site dedicated to lighting a human face. It’s real photography but there’s lot of neat tricks which can be applied to 3D.
Basic Portrait Lighting by Jay Andriot.
- Dedalo 3d is now in a beta testing phase. called ‘Make human app’, it’s a very nice tool to setup human meshes.
-from Lino Grandi & Daniele Federico, a cool character rigging tool is about to be released, check LCS Evolution.