I've had no problems with the mesh in modo (except for flipped normals), either exporting as a single surface and making my own UVs or using the ones that come in from MoI.

Modo's renderer does a nice job with modo meshes IMHO. I believe the normals issues are all addressed now and should be in the next MoI beta. Plus there will be a command in MoI to flip surface normals before export, if necessary.

As for animation - I don't do it myself. My understanding is that everything in modo is time bound so can be animated via a timeline and keyframes. But you won't find rigging and CA tools, NLA, etc. at the moment (unless the reveals for 401 spring a big surprise :-) )