Fist things first. If you want to start animating, Poser isn't half bad for the price. The hardest thing in animation is just that - the animation bit. i.e getting your characters to move in a lifelike and natural way.

You really don't care what the quality of the render is like for this stage. You will want to be able to repeat and correct your work frequently, so Mike is 100% correct in suggesting using a low grade output like preview mode for this purpose.

Once you have your animation sorted, THEN you can start to worry about how it looks in a final render. Its a real pity that Poser only has the Firefly renderer, but again, for the money its OK, and reasonably fast if you keep the qualtiy at reasonable level. Animation will tolerate a lower quality of output than still shots anyway, because the eye is not dwelling on minute detail for any length of time.

The basic technique is the same we have always used, get it right in low res, then crank up the settings for the final output.

Cinema 4D appear to have changed their marketing strategy of late, and the current pricing structure (which was never cheap) is no longer attractive to the non professional.

As others have pointed out, if you need more grunt to process your final work, think about a render garden, as the management software is built into the last couple of Poser versions.