1 Cloth room Bugs, Sorry on that one. I don't work with the clothroom, It always eats up render time (using that freature) which is the slowest feature in most programs.

2 Animation. I don't have the answer for that, other than, You need to Test run a frame before you spend 30 hours working in the dark. Render a  few scenes whenever the lighting changes in a scene or clip. You always need to do this. As of yet the Previews don't show you an acurate example of what the final render will be. As far as anyone knowing if Poser 7 has fixed those problems, No one knows yet, it hasn''t been shiped yet, they are taking pre-orders.

3 Displacement, Blotchey appearance on figures scaled over 200%! This has to do with bucket size and render nodes to the best of my knowledge. I seen a lot of people have this problem. I am on Runtime RNDA. In the Forum they have the answer for this, or you will get an answer for this. Just type in Displacement Problems and do a search. You will get some answers. I'm sure someone will have the answer here, but I am on the forum there, mostly because I don't have the time to spend on a bunch of forums, and look at the new stuff everyone has out.

4 Hip-centric animation. I'm not completely sure what you mean by that. If you are using poses form your library and they are not set up correctly, There is nothing you can do. They will fly all around when they meat the halfway point inbetween the two poses. You can see what is happening on your graph editor. When the two lines meat the next frame they flip. My suggestion is to Use your first pose out of the library then go into what ever motion your animation going. You can always try that second pose, but if at the part where the two points meet and start to spend. Delete the second pose. work from there.

Or are you taking about you are having trouble animating your figure because you are having trouble understanding how the hims work. This mostly comes with experience. but You need to work with IK on when your moving your characture around on the ground. You will switch off your IK when you need to finetune a movement with the legs. (Sometimes you need the IK on the hands also, but that is gereraly an easier part to work with.)

Back to your IKed feet. This is only a general guide. You move one leg forward with IK on to take a step using either the Parameter dials or the Translate Tool. After your happy with your leg spacing, You then move your hips forward with the dials or Translate tool again. Make sure he looks balanced between his feet. There you can twist him at the hips just a little, or you can pull him forward by the hand if the IK is on in that hand, unwhich, alot of time in doing it this way gives a more natural body motion. ( you can fine tune your body parts later.) You can repeat this process. The IK is very good once you understand when and how to use it. It is great for spinning opn the spot. But you ususally have to correct the legs bends with the IKs off if you make the characture twist to much.

I'm kind of going to leave you with that, because if you are talking about something else, I won't fill you in on useless information that you may already know. good luck