Hi

For your first question you can have the textures in pretty much any format that's commonly used.  I usually use .jpgs but sometimes stick with my .psd files if I have layers in my artwork I don't want to get rid of.

Second, I know a lot of people do like to render to image files for each frame but I just output to AVI files, unless I need to do some processing of the images before they are put together.

With Poser 9 and I assume 2012 you can control the quality of the "Preview Render" a lot more then in early versions, so you can get an image that is much better quality. You can use images for textures up to 4,000 pixels wide, and set the quality in Preview to match.

Unless you have the patience of, uh, well a lot more then I do, you won't want to render your videos in Firefly, you will want to use the Preview mode when you go to Make Movie.

I.e. 1200 frames rendered in Preview on my computer about 12 minutes at 1600 by 900.

1200 frames rendered in Firefly, Well, how many days do you want to sit there.

I'm not exaggerating, you are talking many, many, many hours if it ever gets done at all.  It just isn't practical.

You will give up cast shadows and some things like that, just light your scene so it looks the way you want it to in your preview window and that's what you will see in your video.

I only started doing this about a year ago, I'm not a pro, but I got hooked and I'm having a blast.

Just dig in and go at it, keep it simple to start with and most of all, Learn how to use the Animation Palette, it's the whole secret of getting it to do what you want.

Have fun!

Mike

If you shoot a mime, do you need a silencer?