Reggie Replies to interesting comments and emails. Send Reggie your question or tell him what you are doing to learn how to use MMD. What have you discovered?
KayLeek wrote: i need help on motion data
how do i use it
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
reply back please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s the Long Answer about how to use Motion Data:
Wanna save motion data from your dance?
Let’s pretend you have the Sample Dance open and you want to have Rin doing the dance instead of Miku. You want to copy the motion data from Miku and paste it into Rin.
Use the Range-Select windows under the Frame Counter area.
Set the range for this dance as 0 – 800. See that All Frame is selected.
See that you have Miku Selected (not Camera/Light/Accessory)
Click the Range-Sel button. See that All the diamonds are red. Click COPY.
Now delete Miku. Load Rin. Click PASTE.
All of Miku’s diamonds now drop into place for Rin. Click PLAY and watch Rin do Miku’s dance.
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Want to Save a Motion Data file?
To save that dance motion as a file that you can use later:
After you have the Range selected … and the diamonds are Red … click COPY. That puts all of those diamonds into memory.
Now got to FILE and choose SAVE MOTION DATA. You will be asked to give it a name. Name it and click SAVE.
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Want to use a Motion Data File?
To use a motion file, FIRST go to the frame where you want to paste that file data. If you are aligned with Frame Zero … the data will start at Zero. If you are aligned with Frame 57 … that data will start at Frame 57.
Go to FILE and LOAD MOTION DATA. Pick the file you want. That’s it!
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You can download motion data files online … YouTube … Drop them into your USER folder inside the MOTION folder so that MMD can find it easily.
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Motion files have a .VMD extension. Pose Files have a .VPD extension. Pose Files work the same … except they are only a Single Frame. You make a pose file by highlighting the diamonds in a single frame … go to FILE and click SAVE POSE DATA. To use a pose file, go the frame you want, be sure the right character is selected … and click LOAD POSE FILE.
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Now you know everything! Have fun … keep asking questions!
Rim wrote: When I try to load stages and new models, they either don’t load, or do but no color, it’s all white, except for the shading and some random bits of colour… my new models don’t work?
I DO HAVE a fix for that …
What happens is that you are downloading models from Japanese sources … and their file names use Japanese characters. Your computer is substituting English gibberish for those Japanese characters.
The fix is to download some free software that lets you open a ZIP file, keeping those original file names intact.
Here’s my article about that problem: https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/opening-japanese-models-in-mikumikudance-7-39-sometimes-they-don%E2%80%99t-work/
Read my notes … click that orange link, there, to mikudance.info‘s HELP page … do everything, just right … and you will be in business. (You will like MikuDance.info! … plenty of models and accessories to download … updated often!)
Lemme know if you need more help with it.
SarahP wrote: How can I change the clothes on my models?
Using MMD, alone, you cannot change the clothes on your model. The models are designed as single units. They seem to have fabrics, belts, and chains that could be exchanged for other elements … but the models are actually only one piece. There is now software, just recently available in English, PMD Editor, that let’s you modify your models or even create a new one! Also called PMDE … PMD Editor is getting written-up in the pages of LearnMMD.com. Check it out!
BigS Writes:
Hey, I’m kind of new to MikuMiku Dance and I just have a few questions that I could not find on your (totally awesome) site. Btw, thanks for making your site, it helped alot.
Thanks for asking! Yup … that’s a lot of questions … Here are my answers.
#1 Submit a frame? … I guess that’d be Register the pose in that frame … Every time you move a bone you want to click the Register button in the dark blue Bone Manipulation area under the lower left of the Stage Screen. What I do, that also works well, is just hold your left hand over the Enter key on the keyboard. Every time you move a bone, click Enter … that’s another way to Register the bone. If you move a bunch of bones and THEN decide to Register, you can click on one of the diamonds in that frame and then click V-Sel … Vertical Select … to highlight all of the bones in that frame … and then click that Register button in the blue Bone Manipulation area to catch ’em all.
ALSO … as you move bones in a frame and you want to “undo” … just advance the frame counter a click and every not-registered bone snaps back into its old position.
#2 Move a character without bending their legs … You will find that the two Leg IK bones and the Center bone are the main bones that you will use to move your models around the stage. In the Brown bone chart on the far left of the Frames area, Click the +IK to show all of the IK bones. Click on Leg-IK R and Leg-IK L … hold down the Shift key while you do it so that BOTH are selected at the same time. Still holding Shift, click on Center at the top of the list … so now you have the two Leg IK and the Center bone all selected. NOW you can use the Red/Green/Blue rollers in the bottom right of the stage screen to move your character anywhere you want to.
Another way to select the right bones for moving the entire character is to use the BOX-SEL button in that blue Bone Manipulation area. Now you can drag a box around the character to select every bone in the entire model. Be sure to include everything so that no part is outside the box. You know you have done it correctly when you see the Red/Green/Blue rollers light up. Now roll those rollers to scoot your model wherever you want it.
#3 Download another stage or something … Easy! What you are looking for are called MMD Accessories. Search the web for MMD Accessory Download and you will find a bunch of them that people have made available for you to use. You are looking for files that have a “.x” file extension. Look inside the MMD program folder and see the USER folder … inside that is the Accessory folder … put your new items into that folder … note that all of the accessories have that .x file extension.
You can also make your own new accessories … stages … props … using Google SketchUp … Read the articles on my LearnMMD.com site to learn about that.
When you use an accessory, you can attach it to the Ground, to some part of your character, or to a dummy bone, which lets you manipulate the part as if it was another character. Again … Read about dummy bones on LearnMMD.com .
#4 Adding music. There are 2 ways to add music: 1.) “After the fact” by using a movie editing software that lets you blend your video with your separate soundtrack … or 2.) Adding music directly into your MikuMikuDance by going to the FILE menu and clicking Load WAV File. To do that, your music has to be saved in a WAV format … has the file extension “.wav”. You can’t use an mp3 file … it has to be wav. Again … if you don’t have software to convert your music files into a wav format … search the web for some freeware to do it for you. I went through this, myself in October, 2011, and I found a FREE program called AUDACITY 1.3 that I like. ALSO … like with the accessories, people on the web have WAV files that you can download … search LeekSpin Polkka wav or MMD wav music and see what you find. In my DOWNLOAD page on LearnMMD.com I have a link to a page that has the Ieaven Polkka (the LeekSpin Polkka) WAV for free download.
Once you have a wav file, drop that file into your MMD program file … inside the WAVE folder in your USERS folder … so that you and MMD can both find it. Then you have those WAV options in the file menu. Go to LearnMMD.com … to my File Menu write-up and you can read about how to use those options.
#5 Make Ren Walk, not Neru … Easy! You want to use the Range Select windows under the Frame area. Take a look at the walking motion and determine how many frames are used … what’s the last frame with any data in it? Enter that number into the Range-Sel window. Let’s call it 0 – 450 . See that “All Frame” is showing, there, so that when you click Range-Sel all of the frame data will be selected. (Take a look at the other options and see that you can select a range for any one bone or for all of only the facial movements and etc.) Click Range-Sel and see that all of the Diamonds have turned red … they are selected. Now click COPY to put those diamonds into memory. Now you can DELETE Neru and LOAD Ren. Be sure that the frame counter is at Zero because we are going to PASTE the data into the current frame. See Ren snap into the new Frame Zero position. Click PLAY and watch Ren do the walk.
Range Select is a powerful tool that lets you copy all kinds of motions. Following these same steps is how you can save motion data on your own. You use Range-Sel, Click COPY and then go to FILE and click SAVE MOTION DATA … and MMD lets you save that data as a file that you can reload into another character whenever you want. Easy and fun!
There you go! — Reggie
Josh wrote: I found your page while searching the web for help
with MikuMikuDance. Thank you for your page. I just downloaded MikuMikuDance 7.39 and I did not have the missing file error that you write about. My MMD opened and seems to run just fine. Is that a problem??
HI Josh! That is good news that your MMD is running fine. I think the Missing File Error will happen to people, like me, who are running older computers. Have fun with it! Let me know when you Post a Video to YouTube!
KikiKiki wrote: I can’t get my model to talk in time to the music.
Practice … practice!
I am working to make a model “speak” in sync with the Ievan Polkka. No luck yet! One trick to creating a good lip-flapping motion might be to use only one “Mouse” move at a time. I played back the Sample dance frame-by-frame while keeping an eye on the Mouse panel. I advance the frame to a Diamond in the Facial row and then I click through the various Mouse selections to see which ones are activated and by how much. Doing so, I find that only one attribute is activated at a time in that Sample dance.
If you can load your music as a WAV file, you will be able to see the music on the oscilloscope. I find that the view is too complicated to see much more than the beat of the song. Trying to time mouse moves to the music by matching the mouth action to the visual waves on the screen doesn’t look to be possible. You can click “Play WAV with Frame” in the FILE Menu and then you can here the sound made in each frame. Play a short section with PLAY and then click through those frames one at a time and here the tune almost note by note. That may help you to sync the mouth to the music.
One trick I am trying to exploit is the idea of narrowing the PLAY frame range to only the part of the song I am trying to “mouth”. On my Polkka, the Voice starts at frame 500. I set the Play Range as 500 – 550. Then I repeatedly PLAY the animation for just that 50 frames and adjust the mouth settings until I am happy with the result. Then … set the Play range as 550 – 600, and work on just that next little section.
ALSO … I find that when I click PLAY … the animation skips some of the fast movements that I built into it. Almost like a blur, the mouth averages the tight shapes that I registered. I output a test to AVI and played it as a video and it looks like all of my movements ARE in the video. SOOO … what you see on your screen in MMD during PLAY is not as sharp as what you will see after your animation is rendered to AVI. That makes it tough! You just have to register the frames and know they are there, even when you can’t really see them during Play on MMD.
Good luck! … It is all just experience gained through practice.
Crystal wrote: What’s the best way to Render TO AVI? There are so many choices.
Hi Crystal! Thank you for writing! I use the Cinepak Codec by Radius option as my AVI file. If you are planning to edit your video in another program, you should save the AVI as RAW AVI. That creates a huge file that gives your editing program the cleanest images and the best chance for success. I will write more about the video aspect of MMD as I get deeper into it. I have saved your email and I will reply to you when I have a better answer.
SarahP wrote: How can I change the clothes on my models?
Using MMD, alone, you cannot change the clothes on your model. The models are designed as single units. They seem to have fabrics, belts, and chains that could be exchanged for other elements … but the models are actually only one piece. There is now software, just recently available in English, PMD Editor, that let’s you modify your models or even create a new one! Also called PMDE … PMD Editor is getting written-up in the pages of LearnMMD.com. Check it out!
Send Reggie an email to get your questions answered:
Sounds like you are not registering your movements. … any time you make a move, click the appropriate register button. … the RAYCAST controller model uses the sliders… and each slider has its own REGISTER button… and when you move the directional lights, be sure to register their movements like any other bone.
can anyone tell me how to solve the “this is not polygon movie maker file” error? i have been working on this motion for like 3 weeks and this morning when i saved the file everything was normal.. but right now when i’m trying to open that file this error pops up. it says, ” this isn’t the data for polygon movie maker” then another one says’, “error: failed to load file/ destination folder/file.emm”. i’ve checked and both the pmm and emm files are in the exact same place as before, I haven’t deleted any data or models used in the project and i’ve tried restarting my pc, re installing mmd and even tried to open it from the files with ‘OPEN WITH’ command but nothing seems to work..if anyone can at least help me open the file just so i can save the motion I’d be very grateful.. I can’t animate all that stuff from scratch again :( someone plz help meee
I can not put MME EFFECT. I put the three files of DL with MIKI MIKU DANCE , but it does not wok.
What should i do?
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/top-two-reasons-mmd-doesnt-run/
The camera keeps on snapping to a corner of the screen or under the stage…
It’s been a couple of days, did you get it figured out? … what is happening and when does it happen?
How do I get the ikrhinestone effect to work?
You may start with telling what the effect it is and where to get it.
http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/seiga/im5662345
well this is where i went to download it
Do you mean the one with the archive file name “Rhinestone_v002.zip”? I haven’t find one that would be named ikrhinestone in the list that the page refers to.
Anyway, here’s what the readme suggests:
Switch to the “screen mode”. (It will work in “model mode” as well, you just won’t see any changes immediately until you switch)
Select “MMEffect -> Effect Mapping” to open the main MME window.
Select the model you want to apply the effect to.
Right-click on it and select “Subset-Extract” if you want the effect only on a particular material of the model (that’s what the readme says; if you want the effect on the whole model, skip this step.)
Select the model (or a particular material of it), click “Set effect”, and apply Rhinestone.fx to it. The shading of the model should change a bit. (A *little* bit, in case of the model I tried it with. Nothing to sweat about, if you ask me).
Optionally, if you use AutoLuminous, you can click on the AL_EmitterRT tab, select the same part (or the whole model, if you prefer) and replace the default AL_Object.fxsub effect on it with AL_Rhinestone.fx. If you do, that part’s (or model’s) ground shadow (but *not* the rendered shadow; there’s difference between two) will start to glow.
I’m not sure if this is the result you expect to get (I haven’t seen the video from the page you linked; it’s blocked where I currently am), but this if what I got for following instructions.
All the facial tabs say “null_###”. I’ve tried searching for answers, but I couldn’t find any tutorials on how to fix this problem. I’m kinda new to MMD…
Hi Emilia. Sounds like you’ve found a model without any English translations. All MMD models have Japanese names for their morphs and bones, but many lack any English translations. You can add those translations yourself using something like PMXE. Or you could switch to the Japanese mode for MMD– who knows what you might pick up?
Translate your model into your language…
https://learnmmd.com/?s=translate+model
im having trouble opening mmd. when i try to open it, it says, “the application was unable to start correctly (0xc00007b). click ok to close the application.”
im using windows 10, and downloaded 3 other programs that were posted with mmd.
Install (if they are not) or uninstall, reboot, and install anew (if they already are) MS Visual C++ libraries that are necessary for your version of MMD. If that doesn’t help, try to search Microsoft downloads for “SP1” versions of the same.
I was hoping someone could help me out, or point me in the right direction. I ripped a model out of a game and put it together in blender. the textures were on it in there and everything looked normal, I exported it as an .obj and imported it into metasequoia to turn it into an .x file. I couldn’t view the textures in there but the tutorial I followed showed it not being viewed. When I opened it in PMXEditor it was grey, I fixed that but the model is now transparent! I have no idea what went wrong or how to fix it
My guess is you should export the textures as images from your Blender stage and associate them– and the proper paths– with the materials in PMXE.
Could you explain the exporting textures as images from blender a bit more? I’ve linked up all the texture paths in PMXE which turned the model from being completely grey to completely transparent. Thank you
Open an image editor window in Blender, look at what images are available, choose the right one (maybe by eye or by checking textures tab), image->save a copy.
But if you’ve “linked up texture paths in PMXE” then presumably you have textures that are the right ones already exported? Because you’re referring to an actual file, and it looks like it ought to look? When you open it up in something like GIMP?
That’s what I thought I had done, also when I try to save a copy of the image an error pops up in blender. “Could not write image”
Also thank you so much for helping me out, it’s been a problem I haven’t solved in days.
If Blender didn’t write an image, then what file is your texture path (in PMXE) referring to?
The texture that is in the same folder as the mesh.
I guess I made the path wrong?
I don’t know if you did or not. Is it the right texture? Is there an image file with that name in the path that you specified? If there is, open it up. Do you think it’s the right texture for the material?
Does anyone know that effect that gives the models that little colorful shine in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_zACM2qYKE
if so can you please tell me what it is and how to use it ;-;
In the notes on that video, it says they used Raycast, which is sort of a complete shader package. It’s pretty complicated and I don’t know that anyone at LearnMMD considers themselves an expert on it. The shine you’re seeing is called “specular,” enhanced by “bloom.”
Ah I found it! thank you!
I have been working with Raycast, off and on, for months! … much of it is still a mystery to me. Just this week I DID notice that the latest version 1.3.0 is for 64-bit machines. Me? I am still running 32-bit XP… so THAT may be my issue!… but I HAVE had some good-looking results even with my limited System. The “instructions”, available from the Raycast homepage is written in Chinese… and Google Translate does an almost OK job, but the losses in grammar add a layer of miscommunication that I have yet to overcome.
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/how-to-use-raycast-effect/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/modifying-texture-compensates-raycast-desaturation/
Homepage: https://github.com/ray-cast/ray-mmd/tree/1.3.0
Instructions: https://github.com/ray-cast/ray-mmd/wiki
And OTHERS are doing great things with it: https://learnmmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RaycastResearch-image1.jpg
–
There are an amazing number of rendering possibilities in Raycast… several kinds of simple lights, global/environment lighting, “Time of Day” and “Time of Night” lighting, fog effects, skybox and skydome adjustments… the list goes on!
When I am finally comfortable with Raycast, with most of it’s tools, I will write a solid tutorial about it… unless someone beats me to it!
— Reggie
how can i get kira kira black?
I’m not sure if there’s one or *more* than one effect with the name “Kira Kira”, but for the one I have downloaded the solution is this: open the “particle.png” file in a graphic editor that supports transparency (GIMP or Paint.NET are good, for example; stock MS Paint is not), and recolor it into black. Save the file with the transparency being preserved, and you got it.
sorry to bother if for example my screen capture in mmd it when i push ON.Model 1 or ON.Model 2 nothing happens, how to solve it ??
“Screen capture” in MMD is not really screen capture. You need a proper stage or accessory for it. Try the default “stage01.x” stage that comes with MMD to see how it works.
Read these tutorials for a more thorough explanation.
https://trackdancer.deviantart.com/art/MMD-Tutorial-how-to-turn-on-screen-capture-modes-297427171
https://trackdancer.deviantart.com/art/MMD-Tutorial-How-to-model-a-screen-capture-display-366777991
Ok thank you so much…
hi, do you know how i can use JetSmoke MMEffect? i can only look at it atm XD i can’t move it or change colors/speed/length.
https://youtu.be/lUkBiCwpzTM?t=1m44s here is a video where it is used, and as you can see it looks like its customized compared to mine: https://imgur.com/a/ogjew
thanks!
Hai. I have my favorite MMD and well…I’ve been trying to figure out how to weigh things better so her clothes sit normal as well as her hair to be fixed yet I just can’t seem to understand it by some of the tutorials. That and well…I kinda deleted her feet’s skin cause the boots she wears just wouldn’t fit the feet and on one motions they go crazy and I can’t fix them unless I restart the whole motion or pic a new one. >.<
Deleting her feet is totally appropriate– if something isn’t going to get drawn, why model it?
We have a number of tutorials on weight painting. I would recommend https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/pmxe-weight-painting/ . You’ll probably get a lot of use out of the weight transfer plugin. Check out https://disastrousbunny.deviantart.com/art/PMX-Editor-Transferring-Weights-Plugin-529712257 .
Thank you!
why when I give in ray-mmd-master the “main” file on the model it becomes black?
Raycast is tricky… we have a couple of tutorials about it… and, yes, as you create the effect, your model WILL go black, but keep following the steps in the tutorial and you may have success. Raycast is a power-hogging effect; it takes a LOT of computing power and a strong graphics card… so it may be your system that cannot “do” Raycast. A couple of those steps “freeze” my computer for several minutes as I wait for my machine to do all the math… go slow… let your machine work… you may have success.
So I just got MMD today, and when ever I try to save, it says “cannot open save file” and wont save anything. any advice?
What do you hit when you’re trying to save? What folder is your MMD installed to?
its in my documents folder, and I just hit the Save or Save as buttons under the file tab
Move it into a separate folder on your C: drive and try again.
nope, that didn’t work either
When time to Save, save it to your UserFile folder inside that MMD folder. That’s the usual default place to save a dance.
alright, let me try that now, but do you think it could be because I’m using a school computer?
it works now, thank you so much
I actually tried this, but mine still won’t work. I have the same problem. I get the same “cannot open save file” every time I tried to save it to a different place. Even to my UserFile folder.