Let’s Play the Sample Dances and Learn About MikuMikuDance

What do I do first with MikuMikuDance? How do I play the sample dance in Miku Miku Dance? The MMD sample dance doesn’t play smoothly.

Let’s Play the Sample Dances and
Learn About MikuMikuDance

When you first open Miku Miku Dance, you are faced with an intimidating number of buttons and drop-down menus … and then there’s that blank white coordinate grid filling the main screen.

CLICK to view full size.

“Looks too complicated!” To make yourself feel better and to see the “power” of MMD, play the included Sample dance files.

Click OPEN from the File tab at the top of the screen. Choose the one simply called “Sample”. After a pause the model, Miku, herself, appears on a darkened stage. Click PLAY … the lights rotate and brighten and Miku comes to life for a few seconds. Is that fun, or what? Her gyrations are almost antic as she romps around the stage with her hair flying and her belts and fabrics swinging franticly.

Play it several times. Try to see everything that’s going on. The apparent lights that change color and intensity … the way the “camera angle” changes … the “laser lights” and the other aspects of the stage … and, of course, Miku, herself! Watch her face, eyes and mouth as she performs her dance.

After the dance, take a moment to examine the control panel for MMD. Aside from the main stage screen, the next largest window is the brown Frame window. The Frame Counter above the window shows which frame you are viewing. Click the buttons next to the Frame Counter to advance the Frame window. Watch the Stage as you advance the animation one frame at a time. Click … Click … Click … Each click moves the animation one frame.

See the Diamonds associated with each frame. Each of those diamonds is a “registered” position. I call any frame with a Diamond in it a “Key Frame”. Miku Miku Dance lets you, the Animator, create the Key Frames … and then it fills-in the “in-between” frames for a smooth motion between the Key Frames. MikuMikuDance occupies 100% of the attention of your CPU because MMD is always recalculating those “in-betweens” in real time. Other programs that may be open when you start MMD will run slowly or inhibit MMD from running smoothly because of MMD’s need for the entire CPU.

Now OPEN the other sample dance: Sample(All Star). You may be asked “Are you OK?” … That is MMD’s note to you that you have not saved your file. Click Yes to close the old dance and allow MMD to open the new one.

This Sample(All Star) dance is a monster! So many characters and so much action! I have seen it run poorly on some computers because the calculations required overpower the abilities of the machine!

ENJOY! … play with the buttons and see what you have “unleashed” upon your desktop!

– SEE BELOW for MORE MMD TUTORIALS…