I, too, am a graphics fanatic without programming capability (seems you have more than I if you know a thing or two about C#).
My own lack of hacking experience relative to such gurus as halkun and Cyb leaves me somewhat myopic in directing you on where to start, but I'd have to recommend first ripping a FFIX game image with IsoBuster. The process I link to
here from the Chrono Compendium should be equally applicable to FFIX, since I used it to view FFIX textures at one point I think. Free 600+MB of space on your hard drive, download IsoBuster, and pop the first disc into your CD drive to rip the game image in 2048 byte/sector format so that you have a perfect copy of the disc on your hard drive. Note that FFIX is actually somewhat kinder to the novice hacker than Chrono Cross because you could simply copy&paste the FF9.img file from the CD to your hard drive -- and in fact, I suspect this is the very file that some of the dumping tools laying around in this forum act on.
Whichever process you decide on (IsoBuster will give you the executable, or SLUS file, FF9.img and the .STR movie files in their assembled order as they appear on the game CD, whereas FF9.img will give you the meat of the game data only), search for PSicture and use it to scan the game image. I suspect all textures in FF9 are classic .TIM files, which means PSicture will allow you to view all of them. I believe this is the case with FF8 at least.
I would also recommend that you download Cygnus Hex Editor - Free Edition, which has the most powerful search features I've seen on a free hex editor. Arguably it is inferior to Hex Workshop, but I feel that all my own hacking needs are more than met by Cygnus.
Zidane2 provides some documentation on the FF9 model format in
this thread. I'm unsure how complete the documentation on FF9 models is at the moment, but I am certainly interested on completing that knowledge at some point in the near future. However, my attention is primarily focused on Chrono Cross models at the moment; come to think of it, X-Dina, you may benefit extraordinarily from the knowledge halkun and Cyb already shared during the Chrono Cross Model Project. See everything from top to bottom here, and you can learn as I did:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,4770.0.html