Exactly my point, with added integration (ease of use, if you will) of all Source Engine-based games, the possibilities for this tool become nearly limitless.
Only thing that I don't understand is, if we can see the potential for this, why in the world can't the SFM developers see it? And if they CAN see it, why didn't they do something about it from the get-go? I don't know, I don't mean to be a jack-ass, and I am no "big business owner" just a small business owner, but it seems to me, from a marketing perspective, that the more compatable something is the more popular it becomes. Ahh well, enough griping, Valve gave me sour grapes so the only thing left to do now is make a fine wine out of it. lol.

Well, yeah, you are partially right in that I am learning how to keyframe animate, which I am not extremely familiar with doing at the moment so it's rather difficult for me at this point, and yes, I was looking for a way to use the models as actors within the internal engine.
Like you mentioned, it probably won't work unless the rigs match almost perfectly, which I doubt due to the "cartooney" nature of the TF2 character models.
I will probably be flamed for this and if so, so be it, but I never really cared much for TF2 anyway, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way. It's really kinda depressing that this tool, with the massive potential that it has for all Source machinima projects, would be limited the way it is to cater it's ease of use to primarily to only one Source game. Valve really needs to "get off the pot" so to speak, and make it equally accessable to ALL Source Engine based games, not just TF2.
Before anyone says it, yes, I know you can import other Source models and maps into SFM, I've done nearly all of my Source games already, including Portal 2 and Half-Life 2, so yeah, I already know about this option, it's just not as easy an option as TF2 is because the TF2 files and resources are already natively supported, the rest are not and that's what I'm saying, Valve, please add native support for all Source games, not just YOUR personal favorite.

Well, that's my 2 cents anyway

Just about all of these look like fun and I have a ton of ideas of short films that could be made with any of these themes, now I just gotta get the SFM down so I can actually make some of these ideas for shorts actually happen. lol
I'd love to find some good "follow along" tutorials for this thing, I learn way better and faster by doing it versus just reading about it or watching someone else do it.

Hi all,

I'm new here and when I found this group I thought to myself that maybe this was the right place to get started on my "career" of making some fun machinima.

I have SFM and have been messing around with it off and on ever since it was released, I've got the process of importing models and whatnot in my head pretty good, but what I can't seem to figure out or find an answer for is the question of how to use the imported models as "actors". Everytime I try to use, as an example, a CS:S character as an actor, like the SFM tutorials show with a TF2 character, all I get is the TF2 character actor.
Has anyone figured out how to use any of the imported character models as actors yet, and if so, could some kind person please make a detailed tutorial on how to do this so that those out there like me can learn how to do this?

Thanks in advance and I hope to learn alot here and eventually contribute to the success of this group.