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:
Hãy dạy tôi cách tạo ra 1 người mẫu trong Mikumikudance đi , Reggie !
=====Milly=====
I have a problem with PMX editor. I’m trying to texturize a hairstyle I want to use on my models, but every time I try to update the texture, it alway ends up still with a white texture. Am I’m doing something wrong?
Is the texture in the same folder with the model? MMD is not good at searching through folders for things.
Here is a ink to the many mentions of white textures on LearnMMD.
Why can’t my MMD project be opened just because of the accessories, the accessories are problematic, there is also a notification “Please select accessory of .”, but I don’t know which accessory is ‘.’ , What should I do?
I know your frustration! MMD cannot find the accessory and you are to identify the very file that you used before. … Maybe check the saved .EMM file for that dance and see if the system made a note of that accessory. The problem is usually due to that accessory file having a scrambled file name or it exists in a folder with a scrambled file name.
You can avoid that scenario if you use Bandizip to unzip your downloaded Zip and RAR folder.
ALSO… You can use PMXE and Google Translate to translate your models and their files into your own language. You can even simply translate the name of your model. You may need to use Notepad++ to translate garbled/scrambled file names into Japanese characters before you get to Google Translate.
I hope that helps!
— Reggie
Dear Reggie,
Hello! I’m learning MMD through your site and other Youtube resources, and I started using raycast. While learning to apply raycast materials to character models, I looked for a way to save material setups for the character models and couldn’t find anything online. (Specifically, I wanted the ability to load materials for multiple character models, but simply loading a different project’s .emm file overwrites the material data to a null value for all models not contained in the different project.) I’d appreciate if you have a better solution, but here’s what I came up with.
After some tinkering, I noticed .emm files from MME are plain text, so it’s possible to setup a character’s materials once, save the project’s .emm file, and open the .emm file in a text editor to copy the relevant model material data (mostly under the “Effect@MateralMap” category, though one can also save the main.fx setting under the “Effect” category). This can be saved into a generic word processor like Notepad.
When using the character model in a future project, after loading the model, ray.controller, and ray.x, animators can save the project and its .emm file. Opening the new project’s .emm file, the second data category “Object” lists the current project’s name for each loaded object. After using a find and replace feature (ctrl+H in notepad) on the copied model material data to change the old project’s name for the model to the new project’s name for the model (ex. “Pmd2” might be replaced with “Pmd4”), the saved material data can be copied into the new project’s .emm file under the relevant data categories. Reopening the new project and loading the modified .emm file should set up the model materials.
I hope this wasn’t too unclear and was a bit interesting :-)
Sincerely,
peaceisgreat
Wow! That’s a whole new use for saved EMM files… you are using the emm file as a scratchpad, right? I am not aware of any other use for the emm file except as a text-data reference aluding to the data you used in your saved PMM file.
Are you doing anything more with the emm file except for using it as a reference? It’s not like modifying the EMM file will make any changes to the saved PMM dance or the models you have used. You can delete the EMM file with no consequence to the saved PMM.
What am I missing?
— Reggie
Hello again! Sorry for the late reply,
I did a quick test a moment ago, and from what I’ve seem while working with a project using rays, when you open an MMD project, it also reads the EMM file contents, so if you save a project, close it, and modify the emm file, upon reopening the project the scene should reflect the changes made to the emm file.
It’s possible this doesn’t automatically occur with non-ray projects, but I’d assume opening MME -> effects mapping -> file -> open would still allow you to load your modified emm file into the scene . . .
Sincerely,
peaceisgreat
Wow! How about this test… Rename that EMM file so “it doesn’t exist” when you open that PMM… what will happen?
— Reggie
Is there a tutorial on how to create an artwork in MMD, like those you see in Deviantart?
Not sure what you mean… we DO have several tutorials from trackdancer2015 that might be what you seek. He has something like 50 tutorials that may help you.
I mean stuff like posing, fixing camera positions, adding rain and lightning, bending limbs and more for a picture, especially the posing and limb-bending parts which I can’t seem to do right.
All of what you mention is the creative aspect of MikuMikuDance. All is up to you. Maybe see the many tutorials about creating motions with MMD. Maybe start, first, with the original models in the MMD download… Miku, Rin, Len, and the others. Learn to pose them. The Center bone and the two Leg IK bones are the most important. Download a table and chair. Download the old original LearnMMD Auditorium Stage.Learn how to use the stage. … Load the basic models and practice making them sit at the table, sit in the chair.
No one can give it to you. You just need to practice and experiment.
About MMD models… I recommend the basic MMD models because they are tried and true. There are thousands of MMD models available for download that are created by MMDers who do the best they can. But making MMD models is REALLY complicated stuff and so many of the available models have “shortcomings” or actual errors. … Learn to manipulate the basic models and then wrestle with the other models you download. TRANSLATE the models you download.
Our Trackdancer2015 has written many articles about setting up the scene… mostly using RAY-MMD (Raycast)… but several of them use only “traditioal” effects and shaders. These are the best for you, I think:… Good luck, and best wishes!
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/fine-art-techniques-breath-soul-into-mmd/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/creating-spooky-scenes-with-mmd/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/making-your-own-japanese-maid-cafe-poster/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/making-of-my-paint-it-black-mmd-video/
— Reggie
Can I edit a model in Blender for it to do belly and breast expansions?
I am sorry. I do not know. Maybe try asking as a comment on a Deviant Art MMD model page…
THIS GUY knows how to do everything.
But can it be also done in PMX Editor?
I am sorry… I do not know.
— Reggie
Do I have to add/swap the clothes to/on a model in PMX Editor?
Yes. You need to dress the model using the tools in PMXE. You are prying the lid off of a very complicated subject… best wishes!
— Reggie
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/make-a-model-for-mmd/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/position-model-parts-using-placeholder-dummy/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/category/contributorsguest-authors/silent-headset/
https://learnmmd.com/how-to-mmd/contents-list-learnmmd-tutorials-articles/#MakeModl