Chipp,

the problem with what you suggest is that this requires a lot of manual manipulations, and this is exactly what we want to avoid. An insane amount of development work went into the automated  process. From the moment you click on 'upload scene' to the moment where you receive the last e-mail with the ftp information to download your file, everything, and I mean everything is automated. This is a first in the Vue world, it took six months full time to develop, and it is clearly invaluable for the professional who wants a quick turnaround time. 

But it also means that we can't do such a level of hand-holding... We are a rendering service, not a training facility :) We believe it is the users' responsability to send a valid, optimized scene. Yes, it requires more effort, but in the end it is worth it for the user, who will gain experience, and ultimately will do better work. In some way, using a renderfarm somehow forces the hobbyist user to think like a professional, and I believe it is a good thing.

As Einstein said, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler :)