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:
Hi! Well I’ve had MMD and PMX for a while now and I’m still sort of learning how to use them. I’ve searched for tutorials online but even so my models still wont come out like I want them to and I know all I need is good practice but I was just wondering if there were any step by step tutorials on how to make a model on PMX. Its really hard to find one that explains what the functions in PMX are and I get really lost after they’ve already done their model. Mostly I’m looking for something that is well organized. Hopefully that mentions all the functions in PMX and not just the basics like changing the hair color or adding a texture.
To my knowledge, there’s no professional-grade user manual to the PMXE, describing all its functions in one place, as it is an amateur-made software whose functions are obvious for those who are fluent with it already… and those who are not, get to learn from their own trial and error as much as from written tidbits. Still, under “PMDE/PMXE tutorials” category on this site, you’ll get many various articles on the subject, including topics more sophisticated than changing the hair color (and if that’s not enough, you can search for “PMDE tutorial” keywords on deviantArt). Actually, making a model from scratch is a pretty advanced task that professional 3D artists dare to undertake (and I doubt that they do the bigger part of the work in PMDE anyway – there’s Blender, DAZ, and other products for works of this complexity). If you master combining a model from parts, though, it might be enough to satisfy most of your needs until you feel ready to do something really difficult.
Adding the parts to the base is something I can do but editing them is a little hard. Sometimes the shirt wont cooperate with the chest size if its a female, (lets say a luka base) or skinny jeans wont cooperate with the legs, and when I finally get something to fit, It doesnt look well in MMD. Parts go flying or the shirt trespasses through the skin or it stays in the same place as the model moves. Are there tutorials on how to fix that?
Well, apparently you sound like you *can* adapt clothes’ form to the bodypart, except that the result is not aesthetically pleasing. There’s no instructions for *that* particular problem, it’s just a matter of experience and visual taste (personally I have negative zero of the latter, so you’re not alone :) ). Practice and you’ll get better.
As for parts not moving with the model, they have to be properly weighted.
There is a model that I want that can only be obtained from bowlroll.com and the password has to be in Japanese hiragana (I believe). Can anyone tell me how to get my keyboard to write in Japanese. Please do not give vague instructions; I need the details.
Thank you
As I said, you can add keyboard layouts by right-clicking the language button in the taskbar, choosing “Settings”, then hitting “Add”. In case you don’t see a button there, you can reach the same panel a longer way: “Start”->”Control Panel”->”Region and Language”->”Keyboards and Languages”->”Change keyboards…”. After you add a second language, you *surely* must see a language button appearing in the taskbar, after which switching keyboards becomes obvious.
But that’s only relevant assuming that you *have* to use the keyboard in order to enter the password. Most MMD model download pages contain the password written explicitly in their descriptions (if it’s not on the bowlroll page itself, then it’s probably on the Nico page that refers to it), from which you can simply copy-paste it. If the copypasted info does not get accepted by the archiver program, then having a Japanese keyboard most probably won’t help you anyway, and you’ll have to search for a different archiver that works better with Japanese and/or Unicode input. And in a rare case that the password isn’t there explicitly and you only *guess* what it must be in *Japanese* and conjecture that it *might* be in Hiragana, then I simply see no chance for you to solve it.
What’s the model, anyway? While paranoid model-makers who strive to make their creations hard to reach (especially from Japanese to gaijin) isn’t something impossible, I find it more likely that you’re simply looking at it wrong way.
Sorry, I know I am being a bit of a pain : ( The model I want is KanColle’s Atago by the artist Eto. The strange thing is is that I have already downloaded a different Atago model from Eto and the password (which was a string of numbers), worked fine. This one has to be a certain word in Japanese hiragana, according to Eto’s hint. There is no link to NicoNicoDouga and I can’t find a video there on my own. I have the word and have tried everything, from typing in the word in English to copy/pasting the word in hiragana from a Google search, so typing it in directly from my keyboard in hiragana is the last thing I haven’t tried. Thank you for telling me how to do this. Getting this model has kind of become a personal challenge. Once again sorry for any inconvenience.
HI! im new to MMD but i cant seem to start.
i cant download any of the PMD model editors my computer does something and thats it. Also, when it first does ” downloads” it goes on a zip file. Is that supposed to happen? Thanks!
If you got a .zip file, then it *does* download what you need. Now you have to unpack it with an archiver program – WinZip, WinRar, 7zip, BandiZip – the choice is immense.
OK, so I have 3 questions: 1. Is MMD compatible with Windows 10? 2. How many character models does MMD come with initially and who are they. 3. How do you get your Keyboard to type in Japanese? I tried downloading some character models but they wouldn’t work because I couldn’t do the password? is there any way to get around the passwords?
Thanks
1) MMD is formally compatible with Windows 10, yet for it there’s significantly more reports from users who couldn’t make it work. You’ll have to try and see if you manage. Follow the instructions you’ll find on Downloads and Troubleshooting pages.
2) Currently MMD comes with 12 model files, although some of them are alternate versions of the same Vocaloid. You can see the “main cast” on this LearnMMD logo (plus newer Luka Megurine). That’s just a sample of what you can have if you start searching, though… there are *tons* of MMD models out there.
3) You can use some hints from this page to work with passwords. If you really need to enter one from the keyboard, though, you can right-click on the language icon in your taskbar and choose Settings (reaching it might be somewhat different in Windows 10, but the idea is the same, I suppose). Still, you can find plenty of models on English-based resources like deviantArt, so unless you’re looking for something very specific and not present there, you won’t have this sort of trouble.
Thanks so much for your reply! I actually am using a Windows 7 laptop right now, but it isn’t powerful enough to run MMD. I am going to buy a much more powerful desktop computer soon, which will be mainly used for 3D rendering, animating, and making games. I was debating about getting Windows 10 or 7, but I will definitely get 7 now. As for, the 3D models, I have already found a lot of awesome models on deviantart. I was just curious due to a page I read on the site about passwords for Japanese models. Thanks again for all the info and this great site to learn MMD on.
How do I add multiple effects to make it look better? (MME)? Also, do you have any recommended effects?
There are effects that are attached to their own accessories; you can load them as many as your video card is capable to sustain. If you mean effects that are applied directly to the model, though, it is not usually done. Formally, only one effect may be applied to an entity; there’s a trick to separate model’s pieces and apply various effects to various pieces of it, but unless you know what you’re doing, more often than not the result won’t look natural.
I have done everything the tutorial for the water effect has said but I still don’t get the effect to show up. Can you give a literal step by step or tell me what I am missing please?
i want to make some stuff with mmd but i dont know how or where i get charecter modles!!!!!:<
Click around… do some searching… you will find ’em. With MMD… you kind of have to do your own legwork… help yourself!
There used to be some good recourses online. (Citrusmoothie`s tumblr) but the`re offline now….
You can get an archive of Citrusmoothie`s site here: http://web.archive.org/web/20150729010041/http://citrusmoothie.tumblr.com/
Hello, I just recently discovered MMD from a friend and as someone who wants to get into animating this looked like a good program to get me started. However, I downloaded multiple versions of the program but every time whenever I open the program or try to do anything, parts of the program flash oddly – which is annoying enough. Eventually the whole window starts to freak out and then it stops responding. So, any ideas as to what’s happening here?
If my description is too vague I can also take a gif of it and link it.
I have had that “blinking” when I try to run a newer version of MMD on my old VISTA laptop… not enough graphics-power to run MMD 9.26… My laptop WILL run MMD 9.12 https://learnmmd.com/MikuMikuDanceE_v912.zip or for the 64-bit: https://learnmmd.com/MikuMikuDanceE_v912x64.zip
Also maybe try the Original DirectX version MMD 7.39 https://learnmmd.com/MikuMikuDanceE_v739.zip
You WILL need a modern computer with good RAM and a strong graphics card to run MikuMikuDance.
Also see the info about C++ and DirectX here: https://learnmmd.com/downloads/#C++
I have a problem
They formatted my computer and mmd models with safe and all
but after eso..algunos models I can not put them any pose or motion, something that had not happened that …..
I tried it with vaias versions of mmd but nothing help me?
mmd developer i have a question for you? When i download the program down to my desktop successfully, but when i start the program it start flickering the program screen sometimes its not responding? Is this my computer error did this or the program? (Please read this first because i need mmd very very much.Oh and my computer is window 10 by the way) If you can help me then thank you so much mmd developers.
My computure wont let me download cuz it has a virius…does it have a viruse? or is it just my pc?
Our Download is clean… no virus. … but try to download it from the Japanese source… use Paragraph 1.3 or 1.4 when you get there. Let me know if it works for you.
http://www.geocities.jp/higuchuu4/index_e.htm
I seem to having trouble with Beamman’s Grass Effect. I’m doing everything the instructions tell me to; the grass loads fine, and looks fine when I have it in pre-render mode.
But when I press “play”, it won’t move at all.
Do I need to mess with the psychics? Effect mapping? I’ve been trying to figure this out for days.
To me, it moved instantly, without doing anything additional. Neither physics nor mapping has nothing to do with it. Try to make a short video with the effect and see if it moves in the rendered material. If so, just ignore it not moving in “play” mode.
I just used MMD for the 1st time. After playing around with a project, saved it, then when tried to open it again, it crashes MMD and I have to force-closed it.
Any idea what’s wrong with this and how do I fix it? Thanks in advance.
MMD has several Load/Save commands for its various data files. Could it be that you got confused and used a command of a wrong kind? For *project* data you use first four commands in “File” menu and not anything else. The result is a .pmm file; if you open it with a general file viewer it starts with text “Polygon Movie maker 0002”.
I used the “Save As” as usual, and it’s saved on .pmm file. Then I tried to open it again, and it crashes MDD.
What models,stages, effects etc. did you use? Did you edit an existing project or started a fresh one? Try to load a single stock model into a clean session, save the project and load it: does it crash?
I picked some models (mostly idol m@sters) from other site, loaded, tweaked around a bit and saved.
To be exact, I used 3 models in 1. That’s the file that crashed.
I just tried loading 1 model, moved a bit, saved, and reopen it and it worked well.
Is it because there’s too many models? Btw I haven’t restart my PC yet.
The “too many models” is usually not an issue (especially if too many consists of three) unless you hava a particularly weak computer. Try to load each of three one by one as you did the one above, then maybe all three at once. Increase the complexity of a project by small steps to localize the element that made your MMD crash… or maybe to find out that the previous fiasco was an unreproducible glitch.
Can you do a mmd for chromebook
I got your email… see my email reply and let’s figure it out.
What is AMP, Tr and Si?
where can i get them & edit them
Howdy… I got your email and sent an answer. The AMP is the Accessory Manipulation Panel; it’s down on the lower right of the MMD screen. Si controls Size. Tr controls transparency.