Frustrations with the Quick Start tutorial by Val Cameron

BlackSky

Hello,
I'm a new user of DAZ 4.6 and I've been going through the Quick Start with Val Cameron a.k.a. Waldemar B. from Dreamlight and everything is working fine except for one thing.
There's a point in the tutorial where Val 1) Creates a 30m sphere around the figure 2) creates a camera and then 3) creates a distant light, in that order.
As he creates the camera and light he demonstrates how the user can switch to the respective viewpoints of each, and move them around.
When he demos the distant light viewpoint, he doesn't switch off the sphere or do anything else, he just switches to that viewpoint and it gives he slightly distorted dissent light view of he figure and then he pans and orbits around the figure to find the best light placement.
I have followed his demo step by step a couple of times, but when I switch to distant light view, I am switched from viewing the figure, to viewing the sphere it is contained in from the outside, and at a great distance. If I turn the sphere off in the hierarchy the view snaps to closer view of my figure, but turning off my "cyclorama", will make it difficult to predict what shadows are doing later on when I'm trying to work up more complex scenes.
One thing I noticed after watching the walkthrough a couple of times was that at the beginning of it, and after Val loads clothes and hair into the scene and changes up materials, all that stuff is underneath the Genesis Figure in he scene hierarchy. However about halfway through I noticed that all the extra stuff was ABOVE the Genesis figure. Val doesn't address this hierarchy behavior at all, so I have no idea if it is relevant or not. I tried messing about with this a bit to see if moving the light up the tree would change things but it didn't. I also tried having several different items including the figure highlighted in the tree when I created the light, but that didn't work either.
I want to duplicate what Val did in the tutorial with the same results, but so far, no luck. I've tried changing around parents and stuff without results. So can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong.
Thanks,
Blake>:(

Jaderail

From the Light view, in the Scene Tab select the figure, object or whatever you wish to be your focal point. In the VIEWPORT tools if they are turned on is a PLUS sign with four corner brackets. Click it, the View you are in will then Center on that item. You can then ZOOM in or out on that item as needed. If outside the Sphere just ZOOM in until your Inside it. You are also set to Auto Orbit the selected item from that view when this is done.