hborre, Eclark81894, and artbee:

Ok, I thought you might have meant the "built-in" Poser manual which I actually have not read yet . But that's because I have another manual I've been using. I will make a point of reading that manual as well though. Thanks!

Bagginsbill:

I use your environment sphere already, and I've been to your site. :)

On lighting and different renderers:

I do get that you have to relearn materials and lighting for whichever renderer that you are using. In general I have found that I understand Reality 3's lighting and materials interface better. It seems more intuitive to me. 

However, I have had nothing but problems trying to do scenes in Reality 3. I have purchased quite a few props, characters, clothing, and sets over the years. Very few of them work properly "right out of the box" in Reality.

This is not surprising to me, but what it does mean from a workflow perspective is that I would be better off loading just the texture files within Poser - with no additional shaders. Then I should do all of my lighting and materials work from within Reality 3. At least, this is how it seems to me from my experience with that software so far.

That seems like doubling my work to me, since I am at the stage that I would need to learn more about lighting and materials anyway. It really comes down to, "Which application do I learn them for?" Either way I feel I need to know more about Poser materials, at least to understand better what Reality is bringing over and why.

Well if I have to learn more about Poser Materials, then why not just learn that and forget Reality altogether? Especially if I could learn to produce a render like the one Bagginsbill posted above? That's just as good as any Reality render I've ever seen.

That is the decision that I recently made, and what motivated me to finally post here. I feel it would be more advantageous to me to learn Poser materials first and foremost.

Then maybe, one day, I'll try something like Lux or Octane again.