Today I attempted again to make the Maya file become less in storage and also get rid of lag. After reading about the instances yesterday I was excited and ready to try them out for my scene. Below you will see my processes and learning.
After reading about the instances I was ready to try them out. They require a lot less processing than just duplicating the original prop. Below you can see what I wanted to multiply. 
Once the tree was selected I was ready to start. To create the instance of my prop I had to go to this tab under the ‘Edit’ section on Maya.
This brought up a pop up menu that you can see below, this menu allowed me to modify the amount of multiplications created along with the distances apart and rotation of the new objects.
After creating a lot I found out that the more and more I did the laggier the software got, this caused my computer to crash and restore to a previous version when I had fewer props. Below you can see a render with what I have before the lag starts. I really like how it looks but the instances and duplications don’t work so I can’t finish off the scene how I wanted to. 
Overall I am most likely going to re-create another scene in a different area of design. I love what I have created as a first draft but through my practice I have learnt, understood and found what my limitations will be for this project. My next scene I will make sure to create as a smaller area not a wide open space. I am planning to continue to use my same props but just make sure I can fit the required amount into my scene before crashing and lag occur within the software. The last thing I could try and do to save this scene is to create a brush with my props and test if that will work. The issue with that is when I tried to create one I could’nt find the right place to go to for the creation. Maybe it was the tutorial I used or just me not being able to find it, but next time I have ago at my project I will research more into creating brushes too and try and have a working brush for my tree.
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