My main issue / point of concern is probably material setup time, as opposed to render time.

I'm quite used to long render times. The scene below (click to view at full size 3072 pixels wide on DA site) took around 12 hours, maybe a bit more, to complete, with Firefly. This scene is lit with ambient lighting and a couple of point lights (including one placed within the foreground orb). It is rendered "IDL only".

I suppose if Lux took much longer than this sort of 12-24 hour mark though, for the same kind of scene, it could be an issue.

But, initially, it is just the amount of work to set up materials for everything in such as scene that is holding me back from jumping into Reality more.

Don't get me wrong, I have been through and replaced all of the shaders in this scene with BBGlossy2 and other Bagginsbill shaders.

But my workflow is fairly optimised now for doing that. Especially now, using the beta of Snarlygribbly's EZMat add-on.

It's probably just a familiarity thing really... I suppose... and also committing to going through the same sort of process, instead using Reality Studio.

But this is why I am just experimenting with Reality, in small increments for now, I guess...

...once I know it better I'll get an idea of when I might want to use it, for a given scene, and when I'd be better sticking with Firefly.