My first question is why are you wanting to use external render engine? You will find most of the same features and workflow regardless of engine and unless there is a specific feature of them you are looking for in the final render you may not get any real value out of it. If you are looking for performance improvements, you may get better results by optimizing your models or animation first before diving into those as that will still help even if you do decide to use them. Something that has served me well is to focus on making things better by simplifying first before making it more complex.
