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! I have a question regarding collision physics, specifically PuniEngine, I’ve been trying to set it up but I don’t understand japanese, so it would be great if a tutorial about how to set it up is uploaded to this website.
PuniEngine can be found here:
https://www.themmearchive.com/beamman/puniengine
Thanks in advance.
Sorry… I am unfamiliar with puniengine. Not my kind of thing. Perhaps a reader will search his way to this question and have an answer for you.
LearnMMD does have quite a few articles about model physics and collisions. Some casually mention collisions but others will have some meat for you. The system only shows 11 articles on a page, but see at the foot of the page how to move to the next page. That link called up three pages of articles for you.
I got that link by using the SEARCH function of LearnMMD. … In the upper right of each page is a magnifying glass. Click that for a Search window. Start with simple one word clues and see what you get.
— Reggie
side by side configuration error windows 11 when im trying to open MMD for the first time, can someone help me ? i’ve already unistalled it.
That side-by-side error is always about not having installed the proper C++ redistributables. … You said: “i’ve already unistalled it.” Note that you do not “install” MMD. You set the MMD folder on your desktop and run the mikumikudance.exe from inside its folder.
Maybe see my “Success with Windows 10” tutorial.
Hi, I am sorry to ask a question that has already been asked quite a few times but there was no concrete answer or indication, I am facing the same problem with envlight and other setting not showing in MMEffect even after loading things and following a lot of tutorials. As you can see I do not believe it his a question of what is loaded even with all effects applied on models the options do not show… If someone has found an answer please let me know I would be very thankful (this is maybe a repeat of a mail not sure if the first got sent)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YvuO2wNZA8tTKGRIEydNsB2NvYBmjVkA/view?usp=sharing
You do not get those tab options until you load the Ray.x as an accessory. … I just tried it by opening MMD and then, first thing, I loaded the Ray.x file… I checked the MME and there were all of the tabs.
Hi thank you for answering I have retried to do exactly as you said and it’s exactly the same as before…. but this time it’s giving me an error message ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DL_VHtLqYhwPaatJtUf778FpMmIDECmC/view?usp=sharing ) this time I put in the ray 1.50 but it does the same with version 1.50.
If you don’t know or don’t have the time don’t worry I’m using blender instead to have rendered textures and hdri’s but I really don’t understand where the problem is coming from in Miku, especially because I did use a few years back without this problem (I tried older versions of the software’s it didn’t work either).
Sorry… I cannot help you. When I open MMD and then, first thing, load Ray.x as an accessory… and then I check the MME, I do have all of those tabs that are supposed to be there.
— Reggie
Hi thank you for all your work I have a little problem with mmeffect I’ve noticed others have had the same problem (as far as I’ve seen there was no answer) where only main is showing even after loading skyboxes and everything. For information I have tried old versions of both softwares and on two computers if someone has found the solution could you please inform me
I’ve put in my drive a screenshot of what it shoes even after loading a few things
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YvuO2wNZA8tTKGRIEydNsB2NvYBmjVkA/view?usp=sharing
Hey there. I am hoping that you can help with my problem, because I have been banging my head against a wall trying to solve it. I’ve been finding a ton of models on the internet to use with MMD, but I can’t seem to get them to run in the program itself. I keep getting a Character Read Error, no matter what I do. I’ve tried repackaging the files after I ran them through PMX Editor. I tried extracting them through Bandizip with the Japan localization on with the code. I even tried batch changing all of the words that are in Japanese in PMX Editor to English, and I keep getting the same error. Please help!
I have never had that issue! Please send me the link to one of the models that doesn’t work for you… I will try it out and get back to you.
Hi, I have a problem with ray-cast I have downloaded all versions of ray-cast and it doesn’t work for me I follow the order of the files and the ray.x file doesn’t work for me and in the part of the MME map effect file it only appears ” Main” and not the others, like “LightMap/EnvLightMap” etc…, I have the correct versions of MMD and MME x64, I have deleted them and still the ray -cast does not work, just in case the ray.x file does it I add in the accessories part and it is supposed to take time to load the file but it just adds it to me and nothing happens.
Did you load a Skybox? Have you seen our collection of Raycast, Ray-MMD tutorials? That page is arranged in the date order they were written… so the most simple one is the first or second ones on that page.
Please take a look at those to see if there is something you haven’t tried.
Hi! I would like to know more about NexGima, which apparently bakes the physics? Could you try and make a tutorial?
Sorry. I know nothing about it.
Sorry for the trouble, but do you know if there is a tutorial somewhere for spine/hip/leg bone issues? Basically whenever a model bends down the legs flip out and start spinning around, but any other time the rigging seems to be working so I wasn’t sure whats up with the leg set up. It seems to be the legs just cant handle crouching down? Like if the waist is lower than the legs the legs start shaking and spinning. When I compare it to the bone structure of a model that isn’t having fits but I can’t seem to find the exact issue but I figure it must’ve happened to someone before, right?
I checked with our Mae Blythe and she had these notes for you…
I remember that issue well! There’s a chance that it’s intersecting bodies, but it’s more likely to be IK bones.
I did some searching and found what was likely the exact tutorials I learned from!
https://www.deviantart.com/vasilnatalie/art/MMD-Advanced-Bones-Part-3-Inverse-Kinematics-616998394
https://www.deviantart.com/vasilnatalie/art/Advanced-Bone-Tutorial-Part-4-632087655
I hoped I would have explained how to fix it in my own articles, but my solution of “copy and paste from a working model” worked TOO well
I’m not sure if an IK bone that connects the legs to the spine is necessary. In real life, hip joints have a very wide range of motion that isn’t much affected by the spine. Removing that IK bone may fix things without introducing too many issues – as long as the user keeps backups, there’s not much harm in trying!
I tried downloading the latest version of MMD 9.32 recently, and while I have successfully downloaded the shortcut, I keep getting this error message when I try to open it up.
It says “The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxtrace.exe tool for more details”.
My friend recommended that I Download the DirectX update, which I did, then started up DXSETUP application (and finished doing that), but I’m still getting the same result.
Am I doing something wrong with process, or is this a common error?
That side-by-side error is because of not having the appropriate C++ redistributables installed properly.
Please let me know if that works for you.
— Reggie
hello um How can I explain My mmd crashed when I added motion because I added like 9 models for this motion or 4 models but it crashed and also the effects are not working when I add them because when I added a effects it crashed when I try to export it Please fix MMD :{
PS I want you guys to fix it right now I Really want to make my mmd videos better with effects but it crashed when I try to export it Please fix it
Adding multiple models will slow down your computer. Adding effects can slow down your computer. When I load the PMM for this animation, my computer cannot process the MMD GUI any faster than 1 FPS. … So… Build carefully. Add the effects at the last moment so that you can still work with your models.
MMD is what it is… I cannot tune it up for you. Be sure that the computer is a fast one and be sure that you have a strong, dedicated graphics card in your computer. If your machine does not have a graphics card (a Nvidia or Radeon, maybe) with at least a 2GB cache you will be limited in what you can do with MMD… and also be sure to have the latest graphics card drivers installed.
Sorry you are having trouble… I hope you can work around the issues.
So, I’ve been having an issue with a particular fire effect, “Curl.” It works fine. It loads fine. It displays normally, does everything that it’s supposed to, and looks awesome. But if I try to render Curl with a still image (render as picture rather than render to AVI), it either doesn’t show, or it shows as a trail of sparks/particles racing from the origin to wherever it’s been positioned. (Which is REALLY awkward if a model happens to be sitting on the floor and it looks like sparks are shooting out their…you get the idea.)
I have been told that advancing the frame count before rendering so that I’m not using Frame 0 as the image is the magic answer for all particle effects when it comes to still images. But it does not matter if I’m rendering Frame 0 or frame 9001, Curl still does the exact same thing whenever I try to do a still image. Just to be clear, it works normally if I render something as a video, and within MMD itself. The only problem is trying to render a single frame as a still image, and it’s absurdly frustrating!
I don’t suppose you could shed some light on how to make this effect behave properly for still renders? I would really appreciate it!
I got you covered via email!
— Reggie
May I ask something about .x effect and Raycast MMD?
I did some searching and realized that Raycast MMD does not support .x objects.
Most of the .x objects act weird or is transparent when using Raycast shading.
Does that mean particle effects such as ikeno’s Voxelparticle and Beamman’s soft particle cannot work with Raycast MMD?
Or are there any methods to overcome this issue?
Thank you very much!
I checked with Trackdancer about your question… he replied:
Raycast MMD overwrites much of the default MMD render engine which is why some MMEs that are written to support the default system are incompatible. But note that there are a lot of MMEs that are compatible (such as AutoLuminous, Kira kira). As a very crude rule of thumb, post effect MMEs tend to work with Raycast MMD. Wherein effects that are processed at the time of rendering conflict and won’t work.
Here’s a good example of Raycast MMD used with other MMEs: https://youtu.be/ePr0gBecXPY
BTW, the model in the video above is a recently released video game character that many believe pays homage to Miku. Her name is Faruzan and she’s part of the Genshin Impact franchise. She is cool as heck; very sassy: https://youtu.be/0grd767X4Jg
yo! so uh everytime i load a camera motion, instead of the camera motion being correct and idk instead it would zoom in and zoom out and go to other places. ive already redownloaded mmd alot and i cant seem to fix it, so do you know the solution?
im sorry, english is not my first language.
That is a new one! I have never heard of that problem. You say it happens “every time”. The only time I have seen something like that is if I am using a short-statured model and the camera motion was made for a tall model… so that it seems that the camera is looking above my model.
Also, it can happen if the model is not positioned onstage where she belongs. The camera points there but she is not there. That can happen if the model motion file uses a Motherbone to position the model. If the model has no mother-bone, it will not be in the proper position onstage.
Does your model have a motherbone? There are several articles about that here, on LearnMMD.
I hope that helps!
— Reggie
Holaa, tengo una duda. Instale la ultima version de mikumikudance (v932) y posteriormente la extensión de MMEffects para ultilizar los efectos, pero al picar la pestaña de “MMEffects” solo me aparece una pestaña que dice “main”. A todos los demas que usan “MMEffects” les aparecen varias pestañas donde dice “fogmap”, “ligthmap”, “envlightmap”, entre otros… ¿cómo puedo conseguir tener esa configuración con esas pestañas también? porfavor ayudaa
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Hello, I have a question. I installed the latest version of mikumikudance (v932) and later the MMEffects extension to use the effects, but when I click on the “MMEffects” tab, I only see a tab that says “main”. Everyone else who uses “MMEffects” will see several tabs where it says “fogmap”, “ligthmap”, “envlightmap”, among others… how can I get to have that configuration with those tabs too? please help
Your description, of having only the Main tab, is correct since you are not yet using an effect. Those other tabs will appear when you load an effect that needs them. …
More questions? I am happy to help.
— Reggie
I’m trying and trying to render my avi file but it keeps saying “Not Responding” on my computer. It was working fine earlier yesterday and the day before, publishing 2 mmds a day. Now, later yesterday MMD kept closing on me. I fixed that problem today but once I tried to make an MMD and render it, it says “Not Responding”. I read some of the articles. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
I am sorry, I have no idea. … It used to work but now it does not. What changed? You might re-download a fresh MMD and MME… … Maybe there was Windows update that has messed things up… I have no idea.