Define the appearance of the surroundings for your scene using the environment and textures.
Define the surface appearance of objects in your scene using shaders and textures.
Illuminate the objects in your scene using lights.
Become familiar with the Multi-lister, the Control Window, and the Color Editor. These are the tools you use to create and edit the environment, shaders, textures, and lights. You can also use these tools to help you create effects like smoke, fog, and halos around lights.
Set up the camera to render a particular view of your scene.
Preview render your scene to help you visualize how it will look in the final render.
Define how individual objects and the overall scene will render using rendering parameters.