John - the changed subject line is because there ain't no nudity or violence in your post, those flags are to warn people who are viewing at work (or have weak stomachs, like me). Poser will render still and moving images, though there have been lots of reports of stability issues with Poser 5 producing animations (as a stills only Poser 4 user I'm not sure of the current state of play there). You may wish to consider Poser 4 + ProPack rather than Poser 5 for animation. Poser includes basic figures and clothing, lousy hair and poor animals. Alternative hair models are available free, and there are a fair range of textures and some clothing items for the Poser 4 people (who also come with Poser 5), though bandwidth costs have killed some of the old sites. Still, most people eventually spend far more than the original apps. cost on alternative figures (Michael and Victoria from DAZ3D in particular), clothing, hair, animals, sets, .... Poser isn't a modelling application - you will need another thing if you want to make models from scratch - the Modelling forum here has links to many free possibilities for you to try if you want to go that way.