Hello --

I'm brand new to SketchyPhysics (a few days). I've used SketchUp a little.

I'm trying to produce a short (~1 minute) movie showing an office scene (1-3 people sitting around a table, one using a computer -- camera orbiting around the scene).

I've looked at using stop motion with legos.

I'm investigating doing it in SketchUp. I actually created my corporate logo in SketchUp and might tie that in to the movie as well. So I found some really great models of people (they could be photo-realistic or cartoonish). But they were all static. I want a posable model at least. It would be OK if the models were static during the movie -- but dynamic would be better. I have SketchUp (free) version 8.0.4810 running on a MacBook 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with Mac OS X 10.6.6.

I had thought Dynamic Components would help me but wasn't able to find any posable, 3D humans.

I was led to look into SketchyPhysics and installed the plug-in version 3.2 (I think -- but now I can't find anything to confirm the version).

After quite a bit of stumbling along, I've now found two models that seem to have some prospects for being useful to me.

One is a model walking down a runway (Model_walking3.skp http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=cad9142a30555b6fcd66cb8a09369e9b). I probably won't use the walking part. I'm playing with changing all the scripted controls to slider controls so I can pose her. She also showed too much cleavage for my purposes. So I made a "camisole" for her but haven't yet figured out how to attach it without breaking the links that make her posable.

The other is a man in a suit (Rug_doll_Male.skp http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=690904650c2fe0f7868f542389223f16). He appears to have movable eyes which may be nice.

I'm still trying to figure out how SketchyPhysics is supposed to work, problems with the current (Mac at least) version, and these models. I've somewhat figured out how to find and control the links in a model. Perhaps I'm hitting the bug I've seen discussed about the UI dialog not properly populating. It is hard to know what is a bug and what is me not knowing how it is supposed to work.

Before I go much further, I thought I'd appeal for any general advice. Should I be able to do what I'm trying to do with SU/SP? If so, can you point me to any useful models?
I have $0 budget.

I used to be a programmer but now I'm more of a scripter. I've never used Ruby but I might try it. I enjoy putting in some learning effort and scripting work to get what I want. But I don't have a lot of tolerance for playing on the "bleeding edge". Is SP right for me or is it too soon (esp. on a Mac)?