Making Your First Model Part 28
Releasing Your Model

PUBLIC SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT

If you put a small video into Adobe Premiere, there’s a chance it will get ugly and grow horrific scan lines. It took me seeking it out to find out that fixing this problem was as easy as changing a few numbers in MMD.

I don’t care about quality in the sense that I don’t need it to be 4k. I just don’t want horrible scan lines. Anyway, back to the show!

So, we’ve tested and tested . . .

And after doing all of those tests, we’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t getting any better than this. And that’s a good thing! Imagine if a kid sat down and said that they weren’t standing up until they painted the Mona Lisa. If you were kind, you would tell them it would take years of practicing and failing . . . and if you were mean, you’d point out that Crayola brand acrylics will never rival the majesty of oil.

You need to draw a ton of bad pictures before you can make a “Draw It Again” meme.

So, now that we know we’re at the end of the road . . . It’s time to send our little Camila out into the world.

Before we get started . . .

Allow me to take a second to point out why I use WinRAR. It’s really good. I went through the same “You should only use open source” phase as every other edgy geek boy on a Windows. That’s why I have 7Zip and use LibreOffice.

But you wanna know why I hate using 7Zip? It’s not as good as WinRAR. (For all intents and purposes, WinRAR is free.) The first time I used 7Zip in years . . . It kept crashing while trying to unzip something. Opened it in WinRAR and it instantly opened. If you make your model a 7Zip, anyone with WinRAR can open it. However, if they also have 7Zip it will open up 7Zip by default when they click on it. No fun! … (LearnMMD.com’s Reggie D doesn’t use 7Zip or WinRaR. Reggie recommends BANDIZIP for creating and extracting ZIP folders.)

And now to a second important point, don’t throw loose files in an archive! This comes from my UTAU days. Even the most basic UTAU bank has over 100 files. If the person who made the archive just threw loose files together . . . I just had over 100 loose files to deal with. If I was mass unpacking banks and more than one bank did that . . . seriously, what are you people even thinking!? Just make a folder with everything in it, right click on that folder, and use WinRAR to archive it. Simple!

The ReadMe

What is a ReadMe? It’s generally a plain text document with the rules, regulations, and related things. How do you write one?

In general, all a “read me” file needs is who made it and what the instructions for use are.

In the ReadMe, I linked to this series, credited Yesi for creating Camila, and asked for credit.

If you used parts from other models, you would need to write the credits in the ReadMe. Since this model was 100% made by me, I don’t have anyone to credit.

This is a very simple MMD model with no special instructions. Because of that, I don’t need to write any instructions.

After you create the ReadMe, it’s on to setting up the folder.

Folder Structure

I haven’t tested it, but I don’t think MMD likes it when you put the textures in a sub-directory of a sub-directory. However, MMD loves it when you put a texture in a sub-directory. Because of that, you should segregate the textures, toons, and spheres into their own folders. They would work perfectly well mashed into the same folder . . . But it wouldn’t be as pretty! Ideally, this is what your main folder should look like:

As a note, that’s not what mine looks like because I’m adding the “Skinny” model also.

It is always a good idea to delete any textures or spheres your model does not use. I am setting a bad example and not doing that. Why? So that people who are curious about what the scrapped textures looked like can see them up close!

Give a quick check in MMD to make sure that the textures are showing up properly . . . And then all that’s left is to zip her up!

Where do I upload it?

Alright, so here’s the million dollar question. Where do I upload the thing? Seriously, I’m not exactly sure!

Of course, MegaUpload has been out of the question for years . . . But Mega is a great file sharing site! But their links look like obvious malware when they aren’t. So they’re out.

OneDrive is pretty great and I’ve scalped some awesome collections by poking around some Japanese people’s unprotected folders. But . . . It’s kind of hard to use.

DropBox is a pretty good contender, but something about it just feels off to me. It’s more for business than fun. . . . and a 2GB limit?! Really?!

Then there’s BowlRoll and that one that everyone hated using because the ads were nothing but extremely unsavory anime pictures. BowlRoll looks nice . . . But we’re gaijin here! Why would we upload something to a site where we don’t understand anything?!

And . . . MediaFire, God rest your soul. Even with AdBlock, they still throw ads around like it’s 1999. Which stinks, because MediaFire used to be just the best.

With the bulk of the MMD fandom living on dA, the most mindless option is uploading it to deviantArt as a deviation. It seems that a lot of people do choose to upload their model either to their stash or as a deviation.

If it weren’t for the 2GB storage limit on DropBox, I would have used them. But because of that, I’m going to upload her on to deviantArt as a deviation.

With that . . . I uploaded her to deviantArt!

Download here: http://fav.me/dbom34l

Now for the demo . . .

You still want to be a cool kid! You still want to make a video with all of the coolest shaders and all that jazz.

So, you end up making this:

It’s . . . Well . . . Better than before?

Let’s talk turkey – There’s no way that I could make a motion data good enough to show off how cool this model is right now. So, we’re stuck with using someone else’s. However, we aren’t stuck using someone else’s wav file! For our real demo of this model, let’s make Camila sing!

WHY do people seemingly always start the WAV in a weirdly arbitrary spot?! That means that it doesn’t easily conform to the beat . . . Argh!

Let’s talk about Pre-offered MP3s.

I’m very much against using MP3s or WAVs I found online in videos. Bandages pointed out that even if I use a MIDI that I “perform” myself, I’m still running afoul of copyright.  However, I pointed out that as long as Content ID doesn’t catch me . . . I’m fine, really.

However, that’s just half of the reason I’m against using files I found online for mixes. Have you ever heard the saying “Don’t mix a WAV with an MP3”? To the untrained ear, there’s no difference. To the trained ear . . . It’s not the nicest.

Note – WAV files packaged with VMD files are, generally, MP3s converted to WAV. All of the drawbacks of MP3s are now encoded into that WAV. So, it’s still mixing an MP3 with a WAV.

My mixing isn’t the best, mind you. The main reason I do it is because I just don’t want to deal with the possibility of the content ID system messing with me.

Another note – I did something I can’t stand and made the voice drown out the backing. But I’m sick of people telling me that they can’t hear the perfectly leveled voice, so I just learned to give up in a lot of scenarios. 

If LearnMMD is interested, I would be happy to write up how I made the file I’m using for the music . . . But as it has next to nothing to do with MMD, I won’t bore you with it now!

What shaders should we use?!

. . . none.

I’m sure there was at least one shocked gasp in the audience!

Why would we not be a cool kid and use shaders and effects?! No one will think we’re cool if we don’t have some effect that takes ten steps!

Think about it – we’re uploading a model for people to use. Why would we show them something other than what we’re giving them? . . . Besides, the main “cool kid” shader makes Camila look dead. And that’s no good!

If someone told me about a shader that preserved toons and spheres, I would have happily just slapped it on. But taking the time to go through all of the shaders to find ones that did what I wanted would take all day . . . Maybe I’ll do a shader shoot-out someday.

Now on the topic of credit . . .

You guys are killing me, MMDC. Just killing me. A ReadMe said “I found this on Nico, credit me for the Camera”. and I’m just like ? ? ? Who am I supposed to credit for the motion?! That’s the stuff where you want to be petulant and say “You didn’t credit them, so why should you get credit?!” But, that’s not keeping the faith. (Besides, they kept the original ReadMe intact, even if they borked the file names by not changing their locale to Japanese I swear to the good LORD why don’t people change their locales to Japanese?!)

Another thing is the fact that so many people just throw up random loose files. I don’t know who made them. I don’t know if they made them. I just know that there’s a random motion data file in my downloads . . . and all I know is that it came from MediaFire.

With how rampant the community is with policing Model credits, you’d think the motion side of it would be the same. But nope. I’m just over here confused!

Someone help me out here . .  .

Why are there horizontal lines messing with my video?

Regardless . . . After half of a month of writing this series . . . It all comes down to this . . .

Nailed it.