Regarding materials: Vue does not convert materials from Poser or DAZ Studio. It simply imports the texture maps (plus bump etc.) and sets some basic values for highlghts and so on. All procedural Poser materials are lost that way. One has the option to "render with Poser shader tree". This means Vue will pass handling of surfaces with Poser shaders to the Poser SDK during rendering (they are essentially handled by Poser and cannot be modified in Vue). This requires more memory. The same is possible for Poser animations. I rarely use this approach as I find the Vue materials far better. 

With advanced versions I was referring to the "Professional" versions of Vue (Infinite and Xstream). The artist versions lack some of these features but Complete comes close. The main thing I would be missing in Complete compared to Infinite would be the possibility to render out the different passes for postwork (ambient occlusion, shadows, object masks, clouds,...).

Yes, the Vue render engine is a biased renderer with a number of additions that allow physically accurate rendering where it matters (atmospherics, caustics, photometric lighting, ...).

Using both Vue and Lux in an outdoor/indoor workflow is definietly a possible workflow that might be good for what you what to achieve.

Ciao

TD