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:
I have a question about effects.
I recently downloaded MME to my computer, and I love it! However, I can’t seem to figure out how to set an effect to go off at a CERTAIN frame. I want my Miku Append to light up at a certain point, but object luminous goes off for the entire motion. What do?
also, I tried to load in a shader but it wouldn’t show up as an .x or .fx file on the loading screen, even though it is an .x file.
Did you try to set and register the “Display” parameter in Accessory Manipulation Panel?
(to load an .x file, you use *that* panel and nothing else, too)
how can i not let the legs go through a skirt? i tried the box-checking thing but that didnt help.
See if this helps you.
thank you! Also when im trying to postion a model, ( with motion data in it alread), and registred the postion and i click play the model goes back to where it was before i postioned it.
Which button did you use to register the position? There are several, and each one has its own area of use.
bone manipulation
Normally, when you click BMP’s register button, in FMP appears a “diamond”, a marker containing information about bone’s current position. You can look it up to verify whether you indeed registered what you wanted to and where you wanted it. Also, it may be that you changed several bones, but at the moment you hit register only one of them was *selected*. When unsure, click “unregisted” button before registering, it selects all changed bones at once.
Whenever I load a house accessory/map, the sphere map or any other objects outside that aren’t part of the accessory will not show up. How do I get them to appear
I’ve been getting a lot of people asking for help with this, but when they download MME and do all the correct steps, it doesn’t work for them. And I even have them send me pictures of their folder and it looks fine to me. But… When I send them my MMD folder, it works for them. What could be causing this, to help anyone else with this problem?
We have been getting some readers reporting it as well. Usually it is because them still not understanding the instructions. But they soon find out what they keep doing wrong.
Sometimes it is weird like that I know… What may be the case is them trying to install 32-bit MME on 64-bit MMD, which doesn’t work of course. (or the other way around) Tell them that they need to make sure the version of MME matched the version of MMD (32-bit or 64-bit)
is there a way i can add two diferent eye colours to a model? im trying to make monochrome rin :\
That depends on a model you want to work with. Some models have eyes as separate materials pointing at the same eye texture – in that case you simply edit one or both of them in PMDE to point at textures you prefer. Others have a single material mapped to the same texture twice – in such case you’d have to separate the left and the right half first. For example, MMD comes with two stock Rin models – both of them are made by Animasa, but one is of the first type, and the second is another. Read the article on materials to better understand what I’m talking about.
Hai.
a question, is there a way you can reshape a part of a model like the eyes, face or hair? ( on PMD editor)
Another question, can i delete a specific part apart from the others? if so can you tell me? ( on PMD editor)
There are plenty of articles in PMDE/PMXE tutorials category where you can find answers to your questions. (Spoilers: “yes” on both accounts.)
Hello! I have a little problem with MME. I downloaded all versions that are on here but it doesn’t show up, and I copied the files into the respective folder. Maybe someone has a answer? That’d be great! Thanks in advance. c:
I can’t get MME to come up on my MMD program. I followed the instructions but it isn’t loading. Please help! And thank you for this wonderful website!
1) What folder did you place MME files to?
2) What version of MME (32 or 64-bit) do you have and does it match the version of your MMD?
Hai! its me again.
Im wondering if you can make a model from complete scratch like for your OC or something. ( no borrowing accessories from anyone else) If its possible, can you tell me how?
Thanks!
Yes this is possible! How else would you think the original MMD models are made XD. But this takes alot of time. Also you need to be highly advanced in 3D modeling! That is also the reason why people take parts from others…
We at LearnMMD currenlty don’t have the knowledge to do this… (as far as I am aware off)
I believe it’s primarily done in real 3D modeling tools like Blender, DAZ, Maya, etc. PMDE has lots of functions that make a model MMD-compliant but it is just not that good at creating shapes.
Even if I do something as simple as change the color of a material the model distorts and her irises disappear even though it works in PMXE. I have no idea what is happening, and when I used to edit models it worked fine! Thanks.
Nevermind, I fixed it! All I have to do is rename the bones in english!
I have a big question I REALLY need help on!!! How do I get my facial editing to save while using PMX/PMD editors?? I go to the transform view, go to blink, and see that the eyes don’t close all the way so I take the 1.00 to make them close and change it to 1.20 and it won’t save how do I fix blinking ;3;
What exactly are you trying to accomplish with making a model do its blinking animation in PMDE? What is there that you need to “fix”?
Did you click register?
I am trying to make a video for my mmd and once I click on Cinepak Codec by Radius, it just crashes my game. How can I fix that?
hmmm,
Have you tried a different codec?
I use Ut Video for my renders and it works fine.
I have written a post about how to use it:
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/rendering-hd-60-fps-mmd-video/
Maybe this helps.
If not let me know!
I have a Windows XP and when I got the MMDxShow thing I renamed it and everything but I clicked MMD and it showed a thing saying,
“The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002). Click on OK to terminate the application.”
Help?
try redownloading MMD and delete your current install of it.
(You can keep the userfile folder if you have any models and files there you like to keep)
If that doesnt work let me know!
Try to reinstall MS C++ distributives linked in Downloads/Troubleshooting pages.
I tried downloading MikuMikuDance 926 but was blocked how can I download this without being blocked from the internet
Try it from our Downloads page… https://learnmmd.com/downloads/
or maybe try to get it from the VPVP homepage: http://www.geocities.jp/higuchuu4/index_e.htm
… THERE you will want the MMD version shown in paragraphs 1.3 … or paragraph 1.4 for 64-bit MMD
You could use Chrome, that’s what I did.
Hello! I need help with my MMD model, her head turns all the way around, and it isn’t attached to her body. This is my second time making this model, and it only got worse. I need this model because it is my UTAUs character design… (and ive been working on it for 2+ weeks…) Thank you!
Your description does not make it clear in what exactly way your model behaves wrong, but I may suggest that it’s upper body, neck, and/or head bones might be not connected properly.