[all variants] Virtualize/how to use Windows graphics apps via Linux

I know there's a lot of info here about virtualization. But I still haven't found a good solution, after having tried different things and read up quite a bit.

I use a several resource-intensive 3D apps such as Lightwave, eon software's Vue Xtream, and Substance Designer (Allegorithmic). These are the only things that keep me in Windows. Otherwise I would switch over to Linux completely.

I'm wondering how I could use these apps from within Linux (Ubuntu 14.10).
- Dual booting has been solution so far, but it's not a good one. B/c I have to switch back and forth b/w apps (say, running Lightwave or Blender, and jumping into Substance Designer to create or tweak high res textures), I end up mostly using Windows 7.
- I can run Maya in Linux, of course. I've used virtualbox to create a virt machine, installed Win 7. But these apps eat CPU and RAM. (Substance Designer especially, can eat all the RAM you have when dealing with complex node graphs and/or high rez textures.) So virtual machines are a catch22.
- Wine won't run any of these apps reliably


Questions:
1. Is there a way to run virtual machine w/ no overhead?

2. Is there a service to run your apps in the cloud somewhere, and access them that way through Linux?

Thank you in advance if you have a chance to respond.