have never used octane so cant comment on that, have used lux and cycles is much the same in that mats etc need changing, now I never made a mat in lux (used ones put out by Snarly an others in the forum) but making the mats in blender for cycles is pretty easy, its a node based system and while not the same as posers its very similar.Not tried to do an animation in cycles but can see no reason why it wouldnt be do-able.If you have a nvida gpu it will run off that with however many cores the gpu has (my new card has 192(not 196 as I said up there somewhere) so I expect it will fly once thats in (if you want to check how many cuda cores you have- nvida control panel then system info and it will tell you)

I wouldn't want to start a fight over which render engine is best!! they all behave a bit different but I do like having a choice and cycles has added to the choices I can make