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:
ehe hello
i know this is asked alot, but do you change a face texture on a model? every time i try,i the model ends up having some weird confused texture, like the skin is blue when its supposed to be a peach and like how there are pupil less models
thnak youuuu
Maybe the best way is to open up the existing face texture in an image editing utility like GIMP and edit the image there. Textures are kind of specific to a particular model, so if you try to transplant a face texture to a different model, you might see some of the issues you describe. How have you been trying to change the textures?
i type in the texture file name on the texture tab on the parts i want it on, and i make sure i copy the texture file on the model folder.
Thing is, the texture im trying to use is commonly used in the models of that type and im making the model of the same type of the texture used.
Well, doing things that way is going to work sometimes; sometimes, it’s not. Even apparently identical models can have their textures mapped differently.
However, if you can create a download link to the model and the texture you want to use, I’d be happy to take a look at it to confirm that’s the case. There’s nothing easy to be done about it, but there’s always the chance that I’ve misunderstood and the cause is something else, something more easily dealt with.
http://littleaerith2140.deviantart.com/art/MMD-Kushina-Uzumaki-DL-392926764
heres the dl link, the texture should be in it when you dl
Okay. I’ll continue the discussion at that page.
Oops. Unless that’s not you.
Not sure which textures you’re trying to edit. There are two models in that .zip, each with two textures, and the textures are interchangeable. What texture were you trying to apply to this model?
i think it was the texture for costume 1.
i think it was costume 1.
could it be that the texture i typed into the texture tab in also included the other textures than the face? idk its a theory..
When I tried to use the PMX editor or the Face and Lips it says I need to have DirectX9.0c but when I tried to download it, it says I need all this other stuff. I need help.
Instructions for DirectX 9.0c are here. Instructions for “other stuff” are in “other place”.
Hey! So I have a really weird problem. I have PMD editor, and it works fine and everything. But on some of the windows particularly the Weight drawing one the formatting is strange, tiny and illegeable!
I have the English version 1.0.0.0 and I’m operating on Windows 10. I can’t even figure out what is what!
What do you mean by “weird”? Can you upload a screenshot with an example somewhere?
Also, the 1.0.0.0 doesn’t really tell us what the version of PMDE is. Which is not completely your fault, the author was not thorough in declaring a proper version number in all places it’s supposed to be. It’s easier to identify the version by where you downloaded it from.
Hello! I’ve got an MME-related question. Ikeno recently released an amazing effect called IkPosterized, which give MMD a poster-like effect. This is the page that shows the preview: http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/seiga/im5937535?ref=nicoms
The readme states that you can edit the effect to get a different color palette. However, whenever I edit the effect under PALETTECOLUMN and PALETTEROW, it either stays orange or teal (depending on if you’re using poster.png or poster_mono.png) Could you possibly give me insight on how to use this effect? I can’t find any tutorials and the readme isn’t helping me much. Thank you!
I don’t know off of the top of my head, but I’m willing to figure it out. Can you provide a direct download link so I can inspect the source code and figure it out? I don’t read Japanese very well :)
Never mind, I found a copy.
PALLET_COLUMN & PALLET_ROW don’t have anything to do with the color palette. They’re used to access the textures, which form the palette from which IkPosterize chooses to draw from.
In order to change the color palette, you alter poster.png directly. Notice how there are 16 rows and 16 columns of color blocks in this file? That’s what those definitions refer to. They’re telling the .fx how many different places on the png it can pick from.
You can switch to mono pretty easily just by uncommenting the early #define PALLET_FILENAME “poster_mono.png” entry. This is how the .fx knows which file to use. You could also create your own definitions to maintain, well, a palette of palettes.
I’ve got the latest version but when i try to render to an AVI file it says i have to get a newer version i use Windows 10 please try to find a way to fix it because my you tube channel is now dedicated to MMD. Please find a solution.
I got your email.. and have replied… please check your email… Thanks!
I am kind of new to MMD and stuff and well I have tried downloading the latest version of MMD and everything went fine, all was functional. When I tried to download the latest version of English PMX/D Editor, it refuses to open. I have windows 8.1. I can only open and use version 0.0.6.3. I made a model on it and it appeared nice on the Editor, but once I loaded it onto MMD, it said that some things were in Japanese. The old version I was using isnt fully translated either, which I why I want the latest English version. Anyway, I load it and my model looks like a monster. There are patches and holes and lines that are weird. When i open back up to the old editor, my model that i had just made now looks the way it did when i opened it up on MMD. What do I do? I am sorry to ask so many questions. I have tried downloading the editor from so many links and none work. I check my PC and I have all the requirements…Please help me. sorry to make this long.
You may *think* you have everything installed, but “everybody lies” (c). So, let’s check. Open Control Panel’s Programs and Features section. Which Visual C++ and .NET Framework items are listed there? Is your Windows 64 or 32-bit, and which version of PMDE (64 or 32-bit) did you try? Open c:/Windows/System32 folder and look for files named like d3dx9_##.dll, where ## are numbers in 20-50 range – how many are there, if at all?
I looked on My Control Panel and I have Microsoft Visual C ++ 2008 and 2013 Redistributable (x64). I have a 64-bit computer, and the versions I downloaded were 64-bit as well. I went into control panel and didn’t see anything named .NET Framework, so I looked viewing the registry. When I looked there, I saw folders in NET Framework Setup that were named: v2.0.50727, v3.0, v3.5, v4, and v4.0. I know I’m supposed to have a certain .NET Framework–2.0 at least I think. I have 20 D3DX9_##.dll files.
Thank you
Try to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 (link in the Download or Troubleshooting pages, do not uninstall other versions) and .NET Framework 4.5.
Okay I downloaded both. When I went to install .NET Framework 4.5, it told me it was already installed on my PC. I got Microsoft Visual C ++ 2010, and now I am able to open the newest English version.
Thank you for your help
After I downloaded MMD… I cant find it anywhere on my computer! Please help someone..
Why not just download it again?
hello. On PMX editor, im trying to put a headband on the hair, but when i postion it in the place i want the hair is going through the headband and i dont want that. How can if fix this?
This depends on whether you mean that the hair in static interfere with the headband, or that it moves ignoring hairband’s presence. In former case, isolate the hair material so that you won’t spoil other parts by accident, then start selecting individual strands of hair and shift them over or under the headband as you see fit. You should press the green dot cloud button in the lower toolbar to make vertices visible and “V” in the upper toolbar to make them selectable; also selecting mode “Wire+P” helps to visualize model’s structure.
In the latter case, though, what you probably need is to adjust hair’s physics or add physics to the headband (the article is about clothes, but the principle is the same).
plus, when I try to load a model and a part of a model (the other parts I had recently deleted) together in PMX editor the model with the parts I had deleted comes up as if I hadn’t deleted it with confused textures.
Hmm. it’s hard to be sure exactly what’s happening without seeing the end results. If you have a deviantart account, that would be a great place to post some screenshots and look for help!
Here are some of the things I would do in your shoes:
1) Open up in file containing the edited model (with parts missing) and make sure that I actually saved it with the parts missing.
2) Be sure that all of the textures are copied into the destination model and that none of them share the same name. When you import a model, it doesnt look in the original directory for the textures, but in the new directory (the destination)– and if there are any textures with the same name, this can have some strange results!
How exactly do you “delete parts”? Do you just grab a handful of vertices with the mouse and press “delete” or select the whole material from the list in the Materials tab of PMDE and delete *that* (or divide the material into sub-parts before deleting, if necessary)? I highly recommend you the latter option.
I recently downloaded MMD, and I’m having trouble with turning the animation into an .avi file. Using Raw Avi gives me an error message, and Cinepak Codec as well as the other renderers crash the program. Do you know how to fix this?
What error message it is? Do you have 64 or 32 bit MMD? What other codecs did you try, and are they 32 or 64 bit as well?
Well, I have 32 bit MMD, and I’ve also tried Microsoft Video 1, but whatever one I pick just shows a “MMD has stopped working” and closes.
Do you have installed DirectX 9.0c and both Visual C++ redistributable libraries the Troubleshhoting page recommends?
Hey, I’ve got a question that I can’t find the answer to. Maybe you can help.
I’ve noticed several unusual animation techniques in .vmds I’ve downloaded. In one, the camera rotated every single frame, through more than 720 degrees until the next registration (which was not 720+, not that MMD will let me enter that anyways.) The camera registration included the ‘$’ character, although MMD won’t let me enter that character.
In another motion, the models eyes continually track the camera, even when you’re moving the camera around inside a single frame.
Do you know how to achieve either of these effects? Are there other special commands like these?
I’m not sure what do you mean by your first question, can you provide an example? Where is “$” character included, and of what significance is “every single frame”? Anyway, in my video I was able to use a >1500 degree rotation for the camera (not for bones though). It did let me enter it all right.
As for the second question, some models (usually of LAT variety, though other may as well) include a “ｺｯﾁﾐﾝﾅ” facial in “eyes” section (the translated name may vary) that places eyes’ irises deeper into eyeballs. When moving camera, it creates an illusion of eyes following it.
You’re right, it’s the model rather than the motion. Thanks, I never realized that before.
The weird camera rotation was in an animation that ended up getting bugged irrevocably. The weird characters and inability to register camera angles >180 may have been related to the same bugs that ended up destroying the file. Testing in a fresh file, I see that I can indeed enter arbitrarily large camera angles, which would create the effect I was looking for.
I have MMD 9.26 and I can’t get MME to work! I had to make my own folder of MMD and I did everything you told us to, downloaded MME off of here and nothing!
Check the Troubleshooting page – are you sure you *really* did everything correctly? Do you have DirectX 9.0c installed?
I had it installed but then again I tried everything, nothing happened. :/
Hey there!
Do you have a guide for making motion data from fresh?
Kinda want to try making my own for music that hasn’t been done yet since so many have already been covered. Thanks!
Well, making motion data is a big undertaking, and LearnMMD does not really have a *systematic* learning course… nobody does. Everyone pick their favourite tune, and off we go (c). You can start with trying your hand at Jump Dance to get the basic feel of what you will be doing. Smooth walking, while technically not a dance, can also give you some experience. After that… just read the list of categories on the right, select whatever you feel may be useful to you at your current level, keep an eye for hyperlinks in the text and sililar articles’ list at the bottom, and eventually you’ll come to grok the oddball beauty of MikuMikuDance.
I’m trying to install this on windows 10, but i keep getting the side by side configuration error and MMD won’t show up in my add/remove programs tool. What should I do?
Read the Troubleshooting page, it has a section on side-by-side error. And no, MMD is not an installable program, it simply unpacks from the archive and runs, it’s not supposed to show in Programs and Features.
help it says I need to talk to you about the “app” . I double click it but it says that I don’t know what to do I did everything right
(O.o) Who says what? And if you don’t know what to do, what makes you think you did it right?
Hey, do you know if miku miku dance will ever go vr? It would be just so awesome to be able to watch this in VR. Mocu mocu dance works in vr but it has too many flaws, and no shaders. It is extremely incomplete and user unfriendly.
Considering that the latest release of MMD is two years old, and there are no news of its development, your guess is as good as anybody else’s.
when i delete parts of a model and open it up on a separate window ( PMX editor) it shows the parts i had deleted still there but white with some shadows ( and also the part i wanted in color) or sometimes the whole model as if i hadn’t deleted it.
What do you do to delete parts?
i select the part i want to delete ( after pressing a key, like bone or joints) then i press my delete button.
*How* do you select it? As a whole material piece in a material’s list? As a group of vertices (dots)? Facets (triangles)? Do you select the whole set comprising a material, a part of it, a mix from several naterials at once?
(Read more about what materials are, if these questions mean nothing to you)
ok. nevermind i figured it out. ^-^ Thank you anyway
I followed the water effect tutorial yet it still doesn’t work? Can you give a step – step list please?