Edit: I figured out what was going wrong and fixed it, I missed a few value changes and such but I've got more of an understanding on how rendering works!
So we're getting there.
I need to focus more on the rendering; to be honest the light setup and figuring out small problems rendering overwhelmed me completely. I couldn't get the renders to work the way I want to, and I'm sure it's some setting I am forgetting; for now, I'm going to re-watch the rendering video and hopefully update with a better render!
