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 been using PMX editor and I notice I’m missing the Material button that copies the material so you can overlay it. Where can I find it?
I have an English version of the PMX Editor but I am missing the Material Copy option and I don’t know how or where to get it.
Hi Tracie,
Try selecting a material layer, right clicking on it, “Copy Material Parts”, “Copy All Parts”, and it should make a duplicate of that material, including all vertices and faces. Hope that helps!
Hi everyone, I need help! I have quite a few model that have perfectly fine bones in PMXeditor but, when I open them in MMD, show multiple times the same bone in the keyframes window on the left (and still are perfectly fine on the preview on the right). For example, if I select the neck bone on the model, 20-ish neck bones are highlighted in the keyframes mode; if I register a neck keyframe, the little diamond shows on only one of them (and it’s kind of difficoult to find it every time xD) I repeat that the models do not have multiple neck bones, as I checked it on PMX editor. I can post images if needed. They work fine with downloaded motions and I can create motion with them, but it’s a little annoying xD Thank you for any reply ^_^
Hi Fabyola!
Open the model in PMXE and check out the “display pane” tab. This is where all of that stuff on the left– the display panel– is organized. When importing stuff back and forth, it’s easy for single bones to get multiple display panel entries. Just delete the entries from the display pane tab, and you should be good. (And it’s good to learn about that anyways, because sometimes you want new bones there, sometimes you want new groups there, and sometimes, you don’t want things there at all.)
Hi! I’ve been using MMD for a few years now and I’ve recently ran into a problem. When I render my video to .avi and watch it, there isn’t sound. However, when I play the video in MMD itself I can hear the .wav file. I’ve rendered the same video multiple times and made sure output .wav was checked but to no avail. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Hi Taylor,
The most common reason that I run into this problem is that I’m not rendering from frame 0. When you render starting any depth into the video, even from frame 1, the sound doesn’t work.
Did you render your video starting from frame 0 or 1? Any videos rendered from frame other than 0 will not have an audio track attached. If you really need it this way, use Avidemux.
is there a way you can move a certain material part ( with also the bones, phyisics and joints) to a different place? thank chu
Yes…
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/make-a-model-for-mmd/
https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/position-model-parts-using-placeholder-dummy/
In addition to Reggie’s links, you might find https://learnmmd.com/http:/learnmmd.com/pmxe-transform-window/ interesting.
Hi, I have a problem with MMD, The program crashes some minutes after I have opened it. It does this everytime, even when I don’t do anyting! (Not loading a model, stage, ect.) The program worked correctly for me for over a year but it keeps crashing since the last few days. (The same thing happens with PMX editor) I hope anyone can help me bc I really want to make some new models and videos D:
Hi Oliver! I had a similar problem. What I suggest if you haven’t tried it already is to re-download MMD, but keep the Userfile folder from the old MMD so you won’t lose any of your models, stages, motions, ETC.
Hope I was able to help!
Is there any tutorials anywhere for how to do face edits? Like the steps, tools and tips? I’d use someone else’s face-edit, but I kind of want to see if I can successfully make my own.
Not on LearnMMD, AFAIK. You can search deviantArt for “mmd+face+tutorial” keywords, there’s a lot of stuff… some of it is even comprehensible :D.
when i try to load a model it says “this file is not for ploygon movie maker !!” what should i do?
To load models, use model manipulation panel’s Load button, not File->Load menu command; that one is for loading whole MMD projects.
The .pmm Model files are missing in the latest miku miku version. Where are they.?
Inside the User File folder is the Model folder… there they are!
Hello!
I’m having a physics issue. The hair and breast physics on my model collide and interact with the floor as one would expect, but the physics for its coat act as if there’s no such thing as a floor. It just goes straight through in both PMXE and MMD, even with floor enabled. Does that make sense?
I know how physics work and all that (mostly), but for the life of me I can’t seem to pinpoint what the cause of this is.
Any help would be appreciated. :)
Check the collision groups. The floor is assigned to collision group 16, and anything set to non-collide with collision group 16 will go through the floor.
Oh that worked! I didn’t know 16 was the floor, haha. Thank you!
THAT’S how you save a motion data?
I thought you…
Edit>Select All Bone Frame
Edit>Select All Facial Frame Edit
>Select All Ik/Dis/Op Frame
File>Save Motion Data
Name Motion
DONE
its not letting me down load the full verson i have tried 20 times
I am sending you an email… let’s figure it out.
Can you please make a newer version of MMD in windows10…. PLS?????
The creator of MikuMikuDance has not released an update since releasing v9.26 in 2014… as of 9/7/2016, this is still the latest version. They do not announce a schedule, so we just have to wait. MMD’s homepage: VPVP… we are using MMD 9.26 as shown, there, in sections 1.3 (32-bit) and 1.4 (64-bit) … the MMD offered in sections 1.1 and 1.2 are much older versions.
How come every time I download PMDE or PMXE the “PMDEditor.exe” it’s using Internet Explorer to open?!?! Its preventing it from opening it so i can work on models! I’m new to MMD so I never experienced the problem before.I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled but its still the same!! I don’t know what to do; I don’t know if its my laptop or if i did something to make it Internet Explorer.
Please help!
Don’t install it. … Just slide the folder onto your desktop and run the program from inside that folder. … does that help?
Yes it did!!
Thank you so much!!
My MMD 9.26 isn’t opening! Nothing pops up either..IDK WHAT TO DO! And i have so many animations that i cant access in the older versions!
Please help!
Did 9.26 used to work for you… and now it does not?… or has 9.26 never worked for you?
it doesnt work for me either it says side by side blah blah blah
Go to the Troubleshooting page and install C++ libraries.
still wont work
NVM, it works. Thankies!