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An MMD town stage: Making Kerorin Town Great Again – Part 3

Trackdancer

Here is Part three… the final part in this series…

See Parts ONE and TWO… Enjoy!

Making Kerorin Town Great Again – Part 3

Assembling the Town Model

The Master Plan

This is actually very simple but a little fiddly to set up initially. Once completed the plan will offer:

  1. A method to move and rotate all of the town modules in unison in any direction just by using only two bones.
  2. A template which assembles the town for you so that you can avoid the tedious steps of setting up the town from scratch each time you want to use it.

An issue that you need to be aware of…

Some of the modules contain parts that uses transparent textures. These would be the chain link fences and the vegetation. Because of the way MMD handles models with transparencies, under circumstance or just even from some view angles, it is possible to see through objects in an unrealistic manner.

There are two fixes for this issue:

  1. Use an MME effect to minimize the damage.
  2. Resort the draw order of the town modules.

Our plan will use method 2. The solution is not set in stone. So you may need to adjust the draw order if issues occur.

The module load order and MMD’s draw order

Rather than loading the modules in an ad hoc fashion, we will load them in the order that causes the least amount of drawing issues. But be advised that even after loading the modules in this order, from some view angles, drawing issues may still occur. The solution is to resort the draw order list and here is the underlying principle: draw modules with transparencies causing issues after the modules that were seen through.

This chain link fence structure on module kr3_block_a can cause issues if MMD’s model draw order list is not properly sorted.

Here is the recommended draw order sort list:

MENU: background (B) > model draw order (O)

Load your modules in the order listed above or manually sort them out using the same panel. When you load other models into MMD, these normally need to be drawn before any of the town modules. If a sky dome is used, it should be at the top of the list. See this tutorial if you want to learn more about MMD’s draw order functionality: Understanding MMD Draw Order

Super Glue everything…

This next part will be tedious and needs careful attention. Make sure you are at Frame “0” before proceeding.

For each town module (refer to image above):

  1. Open up the Outside Parent panel.
  2. Select the kr3_yyyy_x bone.
  3. Assign the target model. (This is always the master dummy bone module).
  4. Assign the subject bone to the corresponding target bone.
  5. Remember to click the OP register button when done.

There is hardly any feedback from MMD when executing this procedure and this is why you need to pay attention to what you are doing. Note that the canal module only has a center bone but the procedure is the same. Just assign its center bone to the master dummy bone module’s canal bone.

When done, test that it all works by selecting the the master dummy bone model’s center bone and moving it. All the modules should move with it. If any module is not moving, check the OP assignment.

By just moving the Master Dummy module’s CENTER bone you can orientate the entire town model to any part that you desire. In the image above, the CENTER bone is the red bone at the top left of the hill. The green bones are the mother bone and skydome controller bone respectively.
With this system, all parts of Kelorin Town are easily accessible as you just move the part of town that you want to work in to MMD’s main operational area (the area defined by the floor axis).

The final step

Before loading any working models or MME effects, save the file as a .pmm template in the same folder as the town model. This way you will not have to go through this set up procedure again every time you want to use the Kelorin Town model. You might also want to write protect this file to prevent you accidentally overwriting it when working with the town on subsequent projects.

Write protect your template file by checking off the Read-only attribute in the files Windows Properties panel.

Operational considerations

To move and rotate the entire Kelorin Town model with this system you only need to use two bones:

To select a bone from the GROUPS list display, simply click on its label. The label will highlight when the bone is selected.

 

Locate the operational area using the CENTER bone. Work in GLOBAL mode and use the widgets to make the movements. SHIFT-CLICK-DRAG will allow for faster movement. CTRL-CLICK-DRAG for fine movements. CLICK-DRAG is the default behavior. Note that it is much easier to select the CENTER bone from the GROUPS list as it could be anywhere and often times, not within the view port. But you can still move it even if you can’t see it. Just use the floor axis grid as a guide.

 

Once you have located the operational work area to the part of the town that you want to work in, you can use the MOTHER bone to rotate the operational work area. This CENTER bone/MOTHER bone functionality is very powerful and easy to use. The same method can be used with other large urban models.

If you need further clarification on how to use this system, please watch the short instruction video below:

Thanks for reading. We hope you found these articles helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to post these below in the comments section.

Credits and Links

Town models by Kelorin Jo BTA

Kelorin Town version 2.02

Kelorin Town version 3.0
Password is here: http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/seiga/im7540869
(The tutorial uses this version)

IA Rocks [Unofficial] : Trackdancer.deviantart.com

MMD 9.31
PMX Editor
Irfanview 64
AviUTL
GIMP
Effects: ExcellentShadows2 / Ray_MMD

Appendum

While setting up the image at top of this article, I took a break and used that set up to “play” with to test out some ideas. Some how I ended up making the video below. It puts some of the ideas explained above into practice so you might like to see it just for your own reference.

Kelorin Town is full of creative potentials to explore, so just let your imagination run free and have fun with it!

https://youtu.be/fbG9QI8WnUE

 

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