Multiply of Bone Frame Position-Angle Resizes Motions to fit your Model

Why do smaller models stretch their legs while they dance? How can I make my chibi models dance normally in MMD? What is the multiply of bone frame position-angle function?

Dances aren’t always one size fits all in MMD…
Make Models of All Sizes Dance “Normally”

There are models out there with all different shapes and sizes, and every now then we’ll find them dancing to a fun little routine… But something’s off. It looks like a spindly mess of stretchy limbs trying to touch the floor as your dancer defies the laws of gravity and stomps in the air.

Sure, that can be cool. But this is not what we’re looking for.

The problem comes from the motion itself, or rather, the type of model that was used to make the motion. You may have noticed the pop-up that tells you you’re using a different model than the one that was used for the original motion. Most times there’s not a problem, and you can just continue from there, but if a model is significantly different than that of the original you could be driven into a fit of monstrous rage! (Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration… )

 But You Can Fix That!

Ouch!

Take a look at the picture here! Nano Rin‘s so small that she can’t stretch her legs enough to reach their “destined” points on the axis! (ouch!)

Nano Rin is not a standard sized model, but her bones (more specifically IK bones) are still being “ordered” to fit the original motion data.

We can fix this by going into edit>multiply of bone frame position-angle.

First, you want to select all of the motion frames by going to the EDIT tab and clicking on each of “select all bone”, facial, and IK.

Now click on edit>multiply of bone frame position-angle. Under the first category, “bone place”, I changed all the 1.0 values to .4 ( I found that a value of .5 still made the dance look strange. Use your judgement)

… all better now.

Aaahh… much better!

Now your model may have jumped to a different position, and the dance should be adjusted to suit it!

You can always change the values to a different number depending on the model being used. The smaller the model, the smaller the values, and the larger the number the model, the higher the value.

Even though the effort is minimal, using the multiply of bone frame position- angle function does enough tweaking to your project to make it more pleasing to look at. And nothing can go wrong with using it (at least as far as my experience goes). If you don’t like the changes you made, that wonderful “undo” button can kick in.

 But for now, happy MMD-ing!