I've set up and posed two characters and now I want to animate them. The problem I'm encountering is that when I move one part of the body it warps and distorts the other, stretching them and disfiguring them. I've planted the hands, knees, and feet to the floor using the Lock function on the left of the appropriate notes but the other limbs don't move correctly when I move something like the hips. If I move the pelvis, for example, the arms will move -- frozen in place -- along with it with the wrists stretching absurdly to keep the hands on the floor. What I want is for the limbs to bend naturally when I position them, for the elbow to bend as the shoulder moves forward or back for example, and not break the rig every time I move something. Any advice? Am I going about this all wrong? I'm using one of the Asari strippers from Aardvark's Asari Megapack and the Liara Dominatrix model in case that helps.

You need to apply IK rigs to your characters. [youtube:3dbsd57s]Dn-PqHS20Uo[/youtube:3dbsd57s]

I'm not 100% clear on how to apply the IK rig. In the video he simply right-clicks the model, goes to Rig, and clicks "rig_biped_simple" and he gets that cool skeletal structure in his model. I can't seem to do that with either the petite asari or dominatrix Liara. Edit: I'm opening up other models, like the standard TF2 ones, and noticing that the rigs work just fine on them. I guess I need custom rigs for these models I'm trying to use then? Gonna hunt around a bit and see if I'm missing something here.

Okay. Yeah. I figured it out. https://digitalero.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=198&p=1304 Turns out Liara dominatrix does come with an IK rig, I just didn't know what to do with it until I put it all together by surfing Aardvark's threads a whole bunch. With the IK scripts tucked away in the right folder I can successfully apply them to the appropriate model and they respond the way I want them to. For anyone else who might happen by this thread in the future with a similar problem take the scripts from the link above and throw them here:

"Aardvark" said ...
To install these scripts, put them into your steam/steamapps/common/Source Filmmaker/game/platform/scripts/sfm/animset/ folder.

Then you can apply the script and the magic will happen. Now to learn how to do the actual animation in SFM, it's a fair bit different from Maya.

I've got a GIF for a critique now if you guys don't mind. I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around all of this but I think I've got a few of the basics down. I followed a pose-to-pose tutorial for 1 character and tried to apply it to 2. The problem I had had was I couldn't figure out a way to alter the timing of the motions I made. There's very long hold between each motion and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to shorten them. Any ideas?

"en3rgy" said ...
I've got a GIF for a critique now if you guys don't mind. I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around all of this but I think I've got a few of the basics down. I followed a pose-to-pose tutorial for 1 character and tried to apply it to 2. The problem I had had was I couldn't figure out a way to alter the timing of the motions I made. There's very long hold between each motion and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to shorten them. Any ideas?

I dunno how to explain, but first one is going to look much more like your gif humping motion. Second one will be a constant moving forward and backward Try animating using something similiar to the number 2. To make it faster just operate on a smaller timeframe.

I think I gotcha. I actually found a way to edit the timing by creating bookmarks and holding ALT to move everything around. It was even covered in the tutorial I was watching all night. I guess I missed it somehow! I've tightened up the pacing but now I have a new problem to deal with: the program I was using to make my GIFs doesn't seem to know what to do with a 1.5 second bit of film and just cuts out the .5. Gotta figure out a new way to make GIFs!