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:
BROKEN! UNSAFE!!!!!!!!!! GAONIMATEFORSCHOOLS FOR ME
It’s OK. I went down to the last version
I can’t get Elsa up. How can you help?
Windows 10 will not load MME. The program crashing making it unusable. I really love MME and do not want Windows 10 to ruin that fun. Help???
I got a new desktop computer recently that runs on windows 8.1. I transferred over MMD 9.26×64 with MME 0.37 from a laptop that runs on windows 7. When I try to open MMD on the new computer I get a pop-up that says “Cannot open DirectSound”. When I click ok MMD functions as normal, but when I try to open a WAV file it won’t work. This happens on the windows 8.1 computer, but not the windows 7 computer. Do you know how to fix this error?
This error is uncommon but solved easily.
Make sure your audio driver is installed. If not you can download it from the manufacturers website (assuming it’s a pre build machine) for example if the brand is Dell you go to their site and look for your model. It should have drivers listed.
This error occurs when there isn’t an audio device on the system or the device being unavailable.
Recently some devices need a device plugged into the Jack to function. This error is also triggered when your direct x audio libraries aren’t installed. Try and download direct x as well (its the same file as for the graphics, it’s linked on our downloads page)
How do I register the interpolation curve?
Unlike nearly everything else in MMD, interpolation curves do not have to be registered. All you need is a diamond in FMP. Register the *bone* in the necessary frame if you don’t have one. Once you have that, select the diamond so that it should be highlighted red and adjust the curve. All changes will be registered automatically. You can shift-select or “range-sel” several diamonds at once to set them with the same curve; it doesn’t even matter if they are in a current frame or not. If multiple selected diamonds already have unmatched curves, first hit “liner” to uniform them before making adjustments.
I’m having problems with the facial manipulations. I try to set motions(blinking,smiling,etc.)to play within specific frames,but I find the motions are playing right from frame 0. In short,I really don’t know how to use the FM.
Read these articles and see if there are still questions:
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/mmd-lip-sync-is-fun-to-do/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/making-good-mmd-lip-syncs/
Um, how do I download models off of niconico? I have my eye on a model for a project, but I have no clue what to do. It’s the Nachi Akira Italy and Romano models, in case you were wondering.
Look for “Nico Nico” on the right side of the page. There are articles on the site about it.
I discovered you through googling for help when I saw my first MMD music video with kemono characters. I was blown away! I got the models I wanted and can load them fine. I went through your tutorial on making Miku jump with one of the models I downloaded and he jumps and all that and I register the bone manipulations as you state but when I play back the animation, his hair just flicks about! Not what I intended. It seems like it only registered the first position. What am I doing wrong?
I am using MMD 9.26 with Rouga Jin model https://bowlroll.net/file/34458
Thanks for all that you do
I tried your model… both versions worked well… no problems… must be the way you did the Jump dance that’s the problem. Download this motion file, it’s Miku’s motion data from the Sample.pmm dance… drop the file into your MOTIONS folder and Load the Motion to your model from the MMD file menu… push play… looks good??
Will this help?
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/tame-unruly-skirts-fix-fluttering-parts-mmd-9-xx/
When I downloaded it it kept trying to open new MMD pages! I shut off my computer and it still did it! I even downloaded a new one! Is there something Im missing?
I am sending you an email… let’s figure it out!
How do i install parts such as animal ears/tails?
First… search Deviant Art for the parts you want to add to your model… then see our Silent Headset’s instruction for adding parts to your model.
I’ve downloaded “The New MMD” and when I went to AVI Out until AVI compressor and click Cinepack Codec”?..and it freezed and became
unresponsive and MMD EXE has stopped working. Please Halp!
How do I make hair more dense so it doesn’t clip through the body?
I have this really weird glitch on MMD
when ever i want to change the lighting they return to the middle… after one little move. Also the frame number also seem to glitch side by side it does that to any thing with a number on it .When i load in a stage and want to change the size i change it then it returns to neutral O.O ITS DRIVING ME CRAZY
Register your every change… Change the SI size, REGISTER, there near that adjustment. Change the light sliders, Register using the register button there, by the light sliders.
So I’ve recently discovered that my computer actually can run PMX Editor, and decided to pick up that V model I was having trouble with because .PMD couldn’t handle the amount of data it held…Problem: Now that I’ve added physics to the flaps of his tunic, the model completely disappears when loaded into MMD. It works fine when editing in PMXe, but the only thing that shows up in MMD is one part of his right tunic flap and the physics of his left arm…
i want to make an AVIav file, but every time when i choose what the video compressor is it crashes, unless i choose AVI raw, and then it says it can’t read the MMDxShow->dll and to download the newest MMD version, which i have. Is this a problem with MMD or my computer, and if i can how do i fix it?
Not a “problem” with MMD… I am sending you an email… let’s figure it out.
i have the same problem
when i try to render my animation to the it says MMDxShow->dll and to download the newest MMD. but i already have it. is there a solution?
Try to download MMDxShow.dll from site’s Downloads section (there are 32 and 64-bit versions; pick the one that matches your MMD) and place it into the Data subfolder. (if there’s one already, keep its backup, just in case).
ok
how do i make a sub folder i never made one
How do I put it in a data sub folder?
You do not have to make a Data subfolder, it must already in your MMD folder (at least, if you unpacked MMD properly when installing it). Open your MMD folder. You should see the MikuMikuDance.exe itself, a couple of .dll files, some other stuff possibly, and among others – UserFile, Lib, and Data folders. Drag/drop the downloaded MMDxShow.dll file so that it falls into the latter and overwrite if necessary.
KB… you are so patient “:o).
I’m the sun… I’m calm and collected… I’m in perfect harmony with the universe… I will not butcher LearnMMD visitors… Ohm mani padme hummm… Ohmm… Ohmmmmmmm…..
“:o).
still having trouble
Hi! So I’ll be getting a lap top soon, and was wondering if you had any recommendations for specific laptops and possible software I’d have to download? Thanks so much!
I do not know of a specific laptop… has to be a PC (not Apple)… you want one with a good, strong game-playing graphics card… and all of the RAM you can get “:o). … a faster processor is desirable, too… 2.8GHz … 3.6Ghz…
— Good luck “:o).