Having played through a couple of times and looked at the base files, I have a couple of suggestions to help things along.
1) Try and make sure your model fills the frame. Head and feet should almost touch the top/bottom/sides, depending on pose.
2) It looks like most of your renders are in 2200x1238 size. That's good where Denise is laying down, but not so good where she's standing. Try using 1920x2160 for the upright/square poses.
3) Denise moves around a lot in the composites. Try and nail her down into one spot in the composites. That way she doesn't interfere with other models in the scene.
Putting a model into a scene is a big step forward. I know it caused (and still causes me) fits, but it's an essential part of the growth process for this and you're doing great.
Oh! I just remembered something else as a piece of general advice rather than referencing anything you've done. Get a basic paint/photoshop program. When you find your render has small flaws in it (poke-throughs, etc) it's easier to touch them up with a paint program than it is to spend a few hours fixing the scene and re-rendering. Also, you can test out your composites by loading in the main background image and then adding your composite image as a layer. It saves loads of time and heartache. If you have tons of cash to spare, then Adobe Photoshop is probably one of the best. If you're like me and not made of money, there are free programs out there. I use Krita Krita | Digital Painting. Creative Freedom. It's free and does all the basic stuff you'll need.
YW. A lot of the advice is the same stuff I got from Eldricus when I was starting out, so I'm just passing on his wisdom. There are lots of little tricks and tips to learn though.. It took me a while to realize it's sometimes easier to resize glasses and cards to fit in hands than it was to try and fit the hand around them. I didn't know about glossy weight, but I'll certainly bear that in mind. I've had a lot of issues simulating objects to lay flat on the floor to produce clothes piles, so when you start trying that, consult us. A lot of clothes items need work to get them to simulate. I can't wait to see your new set. I'm about to release two new sets in a new setting. Hopefully today, maybe tomorrow.
Hmmm... First up, you only need 2 or 3 basic lights for an indoor enclosed shot, like the void. One light in front of the model, one behind and towards the floor, the 3rd should be to one side, left or right, depending on the pose and how you want the shadows to fall. Main light should be set at 100-150k lumens in the lights setting. Daz defaults to 1500, which is entirely insufficient. the rear and side lights generally are set at 25-75k. This depends on how much light you want. This should give you basic lighting. Outdoors is a little easier as you can have the light from an environmental dome act as the sun. The Environment tab in Render settings allows you to determine the time of day as well as the time of year to position the sun so you can chose between midday at mid-summer or midnight at mid winter, and anything in between..
There are videos on Daz with some lighting tutorials that I found helpful. They gave me a start and the rest has been practice and experimentation.
Alright I'm back, and I added a link to your set on the sticky post.
Looks like stripe gave you most of the pointers I would have. I taught him well! The only thing I would add is go easy on the facial expressions. I usually dial the expressions to only 50% or so. Most of them start looking like creepy cartoon expressions when they are turned up past 70%.
As far as lights go in the void, there aren't any, because the lighting comes from the environment background HDRI. It was made to look good from the front-direction, so keep your camera facing forward and the lights should hit the model nicely. Rotate your model in front of the camera, instead of spinning your camera around the model.
Those pink lights coming from the right sometimes are a bit much, depending on the angles in the pose you're dealing with. You can reduce them by spinning the camera around the model towards the left a bit. I've also spun the camera far to the right in a few of Denises maid shots to get a "very-pink-peeking-at-her-from-behind" effect, but your mileage may vary there.
