Tip number one in my book:

Don't open any of your old PZ3's. Build things from scratch and see how all of the new toys work. Expecially the lighting... MG... especially the lighting. It's heavenly. Throw away all your old light sets. They are no longer your friends.

Oh yeah. Get BB's ENVDOME, load it, save a copy with GC set to 1.0. It IS your lighting tool (along with one 10% infinite light to cast a sun shadow) in outdoor renders!

Get Snarleygribbley's EZSkin and quit worrying about setting up skin nodes. They'll be almost perfect every time.

If you get funky results using GC then run the Image Gamma script in the Partners folder under scripts. Set everything to 1.0 and try again. This corrects 99% of my issues.

Get V4WM. It's a game changer. Free over at Poser Place.

Ask questions. Ask lots of questions. You've helped me so much... I hope the above helps you.