@wespose: Not sure what you mean by integrated, but you can use Lux rendering and materials from within 2.55 right now.

@**Aardvark_:**I went ahead and bought the two tutorial sets from blendercookie and have found them to be pretty good, plus they have just released the first of several updates free of charge. Does Blender Foundation's "The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6," cover the Node Editor or stuff like retopology?

Create Poser Mats for free in DS3