interesting technique for driving normal maps

If you don't have access to soup , fstretch, stretch mesh, or ideform  I thought this tutorial from rigging artist Ana Uzhovska   was an interesting approach to driving normal maps on  a character.

nVidia RTX and realtime rendering

So one of the biggest news items from Siggraph this year is real time ray tracing. Nvidia is really pushing some amazing, albeit expensive , cards. 

I'm trying to figure out if this latest Demo is a play off the starcraft 2 trailer? or just coincidence.   ( also some obvious ideas taken from Iron Man "suit up" scene" )  

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nVidia also put out this Speed Of Light trailer, featuring the 911 speedster concept.. 





but I was most impressed by is seeing these realtime Arnold in Maya videos from the show floor from this attendee..

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... and when you get an hour or so be sure to watch this Keynote from nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. 

• 19:55 for the real time raytracing star wars scene 
• Porsche speedster demo 
• 2018 release video ( character build) 
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Renderer QuickStart from Create 3D characters

This looks like a really great intro into rendering from Create 3D Characters.  Not only does it have tutorials for Arnold, RenderMan, and RedShift, but it also includes an amazing "Pleased Dragon" sculpt to light, but it's all FREE. 

 I've seen a few of Create 3D's offerings before, and they are all really good and easy to follow. 

here is the link to their quickstart page:  http://create3dcharacters.com/maya-renderer-quick-start-2018/