Modeling Life Hacks
PMXEditor Quickly Edits MMD Model using Downloaded Parts!
Textures
Now, here’s a question: what’s a texture? Basically a texture (sometimes referred to as a UV map) is a picture placed on a mesh (a bunch of vertices that make a shape) to give it life and color. Now, a lot of people (including myself) make their own textures. Take my self model for example, where I’ll point a few things out:
See how my letterman jacket is blue, but it still has a B on it? This is as well as the eye texture that she has, and this includes her skin texture. So, I have blonde hair. BUT what if I wanted people to think that I had funky hair? The first thing that I would do is load up the model in PMXEditor.
Well first thing’s first; go find a hair texture! There’s SO MANY on deviantART that I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it is.
I’m going to use the red Frost texture that’s in the preview image above. You want to drag the texture into the folder with the model inside of it, and we won’t worry about subfolders at the moment.
So now you want to find the mesh for the hair. Go to the Material tab in the little box and then in the big box where you see the model, find the Msk tab.
Now, in the Msk box, you want to find the tab that makes the hair disappear from the model. That means that you have selected the mesh for the hair.
Find the mesh in the Material tab.
Notice where it has the texture in the bottom right corner? I’m going to change that to the exact file name.
Now I’ve got some crazy hair…
…but it doesn’t look right. It’s all stringy! Well, there’s one thing that you can do without getting too complex and don’t worry, it’s easy!
Select the mesh and open the Mov tab.
Then click on the UV tab inside of the Mov window and just drag the Scale option!
Resizing in PMX Editor
Now, let’s be honest; I made my self model as close to myself in real life, whereas I’m short and chunky. This was harder for me to model since I had to do a TON of resizing.
One of my pet peeves, though, is going on a part that’s on deviantART and someone asking “does this fit TDA?” It’s extremely easy to resize if you know what you’re doing. I’m working on making a hobbit self model, so I’m going to load up the base that I’ve made for her.
Now what I’m going to do is find a hobbit-like dress.
Download it and open the file with WINRAR, or open it by extracting it.
Drag the .pmx or .pmd file into the PMXEditor window. When the selection window opens, click Add (the bottom selection).
Now drag the textures into the folder so that the part isn’t completely white.
So I want to turn the edgeline off. Just select the mesh of the dress in the Material tab and uncheck that little box!
Now you need to select all of the bones, joints, physics and the mesh of the dress.
Now what I want to do is line the neck up where it should be with the arrows.
Now what you want is to deselect the parts that are perfectly lined up by holding down ctrl and dragging your selection over the part you don’t want to move anymore.
Since this is done, we can move the arms into place! If they need to be resized, use the Mov tab to scale them. In my case, I just need to move them, so I will make the arm as straight as I can.
Now do the same thing you did with the arms to her sides.
Load her into MMD and see if everything is working properly.
WHOA. Okay, so her physics are jiggly af. What now? Well, go to her Body tab and select all of the skirt physics. See those little check boxes? Select every single one of them.
Well, they aren’t jiggly anymore, but they’re going through her legs.
Go into PMX editor and find a physic color that you don’t have. I don’t have purple, so I’ll be making a 7 physic. You need to uncheck the 7 box and make a new physic.
Change that new physic’s group into a 7 and check the 7 box.
Take the sphere you made, change it to where you want the diameter of the skirt, and add it to the hip bone.
Now load it into MMD and change the diameter to what you need it to be!
The only thing left to do is delete the skin around the part and you’re finished!
Spheres & Toons
If you know how to use toons and spheres, your life will be SO much better. First off, you want to change your toons (ALL of them) from toon1.bmp – toon12.bmp. Only choose one, because this will make the model look better when working with spheres.
A sphere is basically an overlay on a model. This can make them look glossy, shiny, mirrors, you name it and there’s probably a sphere for it. I want to put spheres on everything, so look up SPA/SPH files on deviantART to find what you’re looking for.
Drag the SPA/SPH into the same folder as the model and textures, then edit the SPA/SPH just like you did with the textures.
Have fun with PMXE and MikuMikuDance!
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