I tried looking up the answers to these questions but the more I read the more confused I became :)

My first question is, I have a scene that I want to use the some of the props in it in another scene and it says to zero them. No clue how to do that or what it even means. How do I remove the prop to use it in something else?

Next question, I'm having a terrible time with lighting and positioning when doing complete scenes is there any good tutorials on this anywhere. I've cked and I can't find any that's understandable or they all go so quick I don't get it...

Last question, is there any settings I can change to speed up my rendering times?

Thanks for the help in advance :)

If you want to use props in one scene in another, save the scene as a scene subset and only check the props you want to use. The thumbnail will show the whole scene, but when you load it, only the props you selected will load. That's the fastest way to do it. The props will appear in the new scene in the same locations you had them in the first one, and will have to be moved if those are not the right places.

Lighting depends on whether you are using IRAY or 3Delight as your rendering engine. I find IRAY scenes much easier to light myself. In any case, you need to know which you are using before you go look for tutorials because the lighting setups are completely different between the two.

Rendering times will again depend on whether you are using IRAY or 3Delight, and what you need to do to tweak them is different between the two.

Hi ret2go, I agree with what diogenese19348 wrote. All good advice here are a few additional things that I hope will be equally informative. You mentioned Zero an item. There are several ways to do this. I usually use the drop down Main menu -> Edit -> Object (or Figure) -> Zero. Please notice that you then have a choice to zero the entire object or just selected parts of the object. And to be more complex you can select to zero the shape or pose or both. One thing I use this for often is with something like the hand of a figure that is posed not to my liking. I will select the hand and then select all of its children (fingers etc) Then I would click on the Zero Selected Items Pose.

I find lighting easier with IRAY too. If you are trying to position your lights, DAZ has a great feature that lets you use the lights as a camera. Use the Drop Down Tab to set the view to the light you are working on. You can then move the light as if it were a camera and point it where you want it set the spread angle to what you want. If it is the amount of light, you will need to modify the Intensity of the light if you are rendering in 3Delight or adjust the Luminous Flux (Lumens) if you are rendering in IRAY.

As far as lighting tutorials, I have found tutorials and guides for photography very helpful. Start with one or two lights and add them as you need them. You will be surprised how good results can come from two lights of different strength and how dramatic a single light can be.There are lots of Pinterest and other can be found with internet searches.

Rendering times vary with your scene, lights, computer hardware and the rendering engine, either IRAY or 3Delight. The simpler the scene (less mesh polygons to render) the quicker the render.

Jack238