Welcome to the Guild emarde! You might wish to have a look at Kindari's video walk through of Ascension's tutorial, he goes through it step by step. You may also wish to check out the "Tutorials in PDF Format" sticky in the tutorials section. You can search for tutorials by software in this thread. Just have a quick browse around and you'll encounter some other great walk-throughs there. Best wishes on your project, sounds exciting.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh