How truly easy is it to open a poser file (scene) and just render it in Vue?

Is it as simple as File--> Open --> Poser Scene (pz3)   ... Then I click render and I get this awesome quality? 

OR do I have to redo all the materials & lighting?

How fast & easy can it be to setup a poser scene in VUE for a realistic, life like render.

5 minutes? 10 minutes? Couple of hours?

*"How easy is it to make a meal?"
"What's the best 3D app?"

loL, it's not a simple question, I'm afraid, it all depends on *what you are planning to do, and what the scene is" etc :)

Vue with Poser import ability (which is most of them now) can load an entire Poser scene in a few seconds or a minute or two.

But...to make it good, yes it will take time and effort, IMHO. I'm a fussy bast*rd, lol, so I go in and edit the hell out of materials etc to get it working the way I like ;)

note that Poser materials have HUGE textures and unless you have an uber PC, it can hammer Vue to the ground...3 or 4 Poser folk with 4000x4000 textures = you better have at least 2 gigs of RAM.

My tutorial on this, note I'm going to update this soon, as I need ot add in stuff about SSS, and saving as .vob for max effciency :)
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/tutorials/htm/18.html

Hmmm seems like quite the process but it would be worth it for the better rendering power.

I set up all my scenes inside Poser before taking them into Vue for rendering, it's a very easy and painless procedure!
As Silverblade says, the set up then in Vue is mainly camera and lighting but obviously there are other things to take into account also.
Vue's lighting and render engine knocks spots off anything Poser can do which is the main reason I use it but by no means the only reason.
For outdoor scenes Vue easily beats Poser also when you can use eco-systems and realistic vistas, it's "simply the best" as Tina Turner would say!!

Right.well you cannot load a Poser scene into Poser and have a work of art either.No matter what you do,you will have to work on it man.Vue doesent support Poser lighting,nor does it handle Poser reflections properly nor proper bump mapping nor proper specular...and the list goes on.So yeah,to get anything good you will have to work on it...but then again why wouldnt you want to:D

The 2 main things I will say for Vue over Poser are - lighting flexibility/atmosphere & scale of rendering. Want a person dwarfed by a cave entrance? Vue's the kiddo .

I have been doing animations with Poser and VUE.  For me the render times are horrible when rendering frame by frame in VUE with an animated Poser scene. So I would typically duplicate the lighting from Poser to Vue as much as possible.  Render the background scene in VUE, then composite over the Poser animation and shadows.  If you plan your scene you can get a pretty good result.  Plus if camera is stationary  - compositing can save you lots of time.

Yes, it means two renders but I think I am still spending slighlty less time on it this way.

Quote - Right.well you cannot load a Poser scene into Poser and have a work of art either.No matter what you do,you will have to work on it man.Vue doesent support Poser lighting,nor does it handle Poser reflections properly nor proper bump mapping nor proper specular...and the list goes on.So yeah,to get anything good you will have to work on it...but then again why wouldnt you want to:D

Right on! That function editor is so funky...

Topaz is right, when I started with Poser I expected realistic renders at the click of a mouse...

That was 3 years back and a lot of mouse clicks ago. You will need to work at it, but it is enthralling stuff (you do spell expensive that way don't you? Oh well, enthralling, expensive - it's close.).

I now find myself modeling in Vue, and all that from a guy who 'just' wanted to illustrate some stories...

In the days when I had time to write! :D