This has been advertised on this server many times before. Fascinating stuff
that I hope will someday make it into 4.0... BTW, I have created a wish list
of stuff I'd like in 4.0 - I'll append an editted-down version of it here.

BSSRDF:-
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/bssrdf/
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/scatteringeqns/
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~dorsey/papers/stone/
Blinn Shading:-  see MegaPOV
Support for RenderMan Shaders:-  see POV-Man
Blurred reflections and transparency:-  see MegaPOV and Chris Huff's work
Weathered Textures:-
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0200issue/0200dorsey.html
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~dorsey/weathering/
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~dorsey/papers/patina
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~dorsey/papers/wet_materials
http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/~dorsey/papers/flow/
Smoke Simulation:-  http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/smoke/
Liquids Simulation:-  http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/water/water.pdf
Cloth Simulation:-  a generalized solution should be developed from the work
done so far
Tesselation:- see Warp's patch
Subdivision Surfaces:-  see VanSickle's work, and how to hard-code it
Non-linear transformations
Mesh-->Patch conversion:-
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/surfacefitting/
displacement-mapping:-  http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/displace/
NURBS
Motion-blur:- see MegaPOV
Post-processing:-  teach POV to output extra data to be fed to a helper
utility
New focal blur solutions:-  http://www.flarg.com/bokeh.html
Better (?) radiosity:-
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/veach_thesis/
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/metro/
Efficient Rendering of Scenes with Many Objects (Like Plants):-
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/ecosys/
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/coherentrt/
Simple Bones / Inverse-Kinematics System

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