3d Mmd Model Maker
Say, you have models for bras and underwear; static stuff. Adding some bones, assign to vertices and let them become moveable. The result either looks horrible, falls immediately off when the model is loaded (that's pretty funny, panties drop on load) although no physics in added, mmd crashes on load. 3DC.io (3D Creationist) is the easiest app for creating 3D models, delivering the best. From talented Thai anime MMD maker to professional European journalist. Download content, we have stopped all. No Sounds, No Musics.
In this article we will briefly discuss and analyze the most common techniques used to create animations in MMD. Before we do that though, it will be interesting to describe how animations used to be and to an extent is still being done manually. The reason for this is so that you can fully appreciate how wonderful MMD really is.A couple of decades ago, I went to visit a friend of mine who ran what was known as an advertising workshop. This was a small company that did a lot of things related to the advertising industry. Being a freelance designer, it was a 'smart' thing to ally oneself with larger organizations for mutual business benefits.
They had just received a contract to do a 30 second animated TV commercial. Since I was in-between projects, my friend asked me if I could help out with this project 'pro bono' as he was understaffed. Since I've never done anything like this, like an idiot I agreed.
The animation required a talking, flying bee to be overlaid over a film sequence of a real product. It was done manually only using hand drawn cell animation.
Specifically, it required 720 plus hand drawn cells which was done by a total of 4 people including myself (I just did some of the coloring). This was because the animation was done at the paltry rate of 24 fps. In comparison, MMD can do animations at 60 fps.It took us a week working long hours to accomplish a mere 30 seconds of animation. To describe the actual process it took to do our portion of the work will take another article. Suffice to say, it was no fun. It was really hard work.
After we did our portion of the work, the rest was outsourced to a commercial film lab to complete. As for the end result, it was kind of cool to see the bee do it stuff, but honestly, despite the huge amount of work and the number of people required to make it possible to do, it was kind of simplistic.
Fast forward a couple of decades and all of this can be done by a single person using MMD and a single computer. The resulting product is (usually) light years ahead in terms of quality and with only a fraction of the work required. So when people moan about how hard it is for them to use MMD to make animations, I don't tend to be too sympathetic.
However, that doesn't mean the actual process of making animations with MMD is necessarily easy either. In fact it isn't. There are reasons for this and partly this is to do with how our bodies actually work.
Do this: With your right arm at your side bend your elbow 90 degrees. Now lift your arm straight up and reach as high as you can.
How many bones did you have to move to complete the entire sequence?
What were your fingers doing?
Or your legs and for that matter the other parts of your body that you were not thinking about?
The problem with realistic animations is that it needs to capture all these details. Although it only takes seconds to do these simple movements, our eyes will capture all of it even if our brains do not consciously register every minute detail.
With MMD and most animation processes, we use a process called key frames and interpolation. Let's have a closer look at this procedure so you can see where the real problem with it lies.
With our 'bend the arm and raise it' example, there are roughly three key frames.
The arm at rest.
The arm with the elbow bent at 90 degrees.
The arm fully raised.
With traditional animation methods between each key frame it is necessary to draw each frame between key frames manually. MMD does that for us automatically. So this is huge savings in effort.
But the problem with both methods lies in the details. This is because, this type of approach to animation breaks the motion down into its most simplistic form. It could miss out on the minute details such as the posture of the spine that occurs in real life. For even a really skilled MMD animator to capture all these subtleties is, if you really think about it, an almost impossible task.
So what are the solutions to achieve motions that truly reflect close to real life movements using MMD? We will discuss the three most common ways and describe these below.
MMD can be hooked up to some type of a motion capture system. This requires that the animator does the actual motion which is then captured by a camera and translated into motion data that can be used by MMD models.
This type of animation is arguably the most accurate. The downside is that it is very data intensive.
Given that MMD has an upper limit for the size of motion data files, this could have a limit on the length of an animation. In practice, the motion capture system logs a key frame every two or three frames so it captures every detail of what the body is doing.
There are several types of systems available which can be hooked up to MMD. Other than the purchase price of these systems, getting them to work with MMD can be a bit of a challenge so do your own research before going this route if you want to do something like this.
Bear in mind also that unless you can dance or have access to someone who can, to make a song and dance routine with this type of system is pretty useless on top of all the technical hurdles that needs to be overcome.
Recommendation: Counter intuitively as it may sound, I would not recommend going this route unless you are really technically savvy. You really need to know what you are doing to make systems like these to work for you to produce something useful.
Here's an example just to show you what this type of system can do:
This is a very popular technique with a lot of Japanese motion makers and in a nutshell, simply to create the motion, MMD is used to manually trace an existing dance by a real human. The video clip below shows the theory and its application.
This is something that anyone can do but the downside is that it is very tedious and painstaking work. On the plus side, it requires no special equipment other than a good work platform (computer).
Almost everyone may be familiar with this popular motion performance:
It took the motion maker three months to complete the motion. So, depending on length and complexity, it might not be something for the faint-hearted.
Recommendation: If you don't want to create your dance choreography from scratch and have the patience to do something like this, it is extremely effective and rewarding. Because the method has at its basis a real body, the motion, if copied faithfully, will capture all the little nuances that are required to create a convincing performance.
I cannot emphasize how effective this method really is; and if you ever wondered why our Japanese counterparts in the MMDC are so good at creating dance motions for MMD, most likely they traced or adapted it from a real performance by real people.
Case in point: the very popular Gokuraku Jodo motion.
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Original:
The MMD version:
I am not trying to suggest that people are cheating or whatever by using the motion tracing method. It is not easy to do well; the fact that these MMD motions are done as well as they are is reflected in somethings that many of us may not be aware of: the actual amount of time, attention to detail and just sheer perseverance that it takes to do something like these motions.This is my personal preferred method. However, it is probably the hardest; although this is not to suggest that the other methods above do not have their complexities. For this method to work, assuming that you are working solo, you will need to create the choreography for the performance from scratch, or at least have some references to work from. You also have to have a very, very good basic understanding of how the human body really moves.
Honestly, I cannot dance nor can I create choreograph dance moves and as for understanding how the human body moves, that is still a work-in-progress. However, you do not have to be an expert at any of these to create credible performances if you are willing to accept that, as a beginner, which most of us are, that it is a learning process with a steep and never ending learning curve.
As I have cautioned above, the biggest problem with this form of animation is that it requires a lot of attention being paid to minute details in order to be able to convey a realistic performance. With motion capture and traces, these are not a problem as these are captured in the process as the poses are made. Doing it from scratch really requires a lot of thought; it is hard but not impossible and there are many credible, made from scratch motions that shows these details in their execution.
All that said, there is nothing wrong with adopting a stylized approach either and omit some or all of these details. There are many examples of animations that omit these details and still remain credible and watchable. This is very common with 2D animations, where you can get away with a lot of abstraction. With 3D animation, you will ultimately have to make a decision on how much accuracy to details you need to incorporate.
Anyway, by way of example of a manual animation, the following example took about a month to do:
Alright that more or less sums up our overview of animation methods that can be used by MMD motion makers. If you are seriously interested in making your own motions, based purely from what I have personally learned, here are my recommendations:
Never say 'I can't'. If you have a negative mind set you'll never do anything.
Don't ever think that your first efforts at making animations will be perfect. If you think along this line, you will only be setting yourself for disappointment and failure. Unless you are naturally gifted, you will fail more often than you will succeed. That is normal.
Watch tons of anime and the work of other MMD animators. Figure out what works, how it is done and adapt what you learn to what you do.
Just like no one can pick up a pencil and draw perfectly, the same applies to making motions, using any of the methods noted above. So practice, practice and practice.
Watch real people move. Make the same motions yourself for anything that you are trying to animate. Just like our example at the top of this article about raising your arm; moving almost any part of your body will result in other parts of your body moving as well. The amount of details that you put into your animations will be the final determinant as to how convincing that animation will be.
If your interest is making dance motions, because of how complex dance movements are in real life, do not be shy to use the motion tracing method. It is probably the best method for MMD. If you think about it, how often do you see dance motions in anime? Hardly ever, simply because of how hard it is to do convincingly (and how expensive it would be to do). But wherein this is true for traditional animation methods, with computer based animation methods, it is very doable. Leverage this fact to your advantage. Just because it is a trace, does not mean that it has any less merits.
- Talk to other MMD content creators (modelers, model editors, motion makers, video makers, etc). Shared experiences and knowledge is invaluable.
When you first start making motions and you have never done so before; use the default Animasa models that comes with MMD. This is because they have a very basic and simple bone system. As such they are invaluable in learning how MMD 3D models actually work. I cannot emphasize how important these types of models are for a beginner.
Simplistic though these models are, some of the best animations made using MMD are made exactly with this type of model.
Seriously, nothing will kill your motion making experience faster than a badly structured model regardless of how good it may look. So, learn to examine a model's underlying structure to see how well it will work and how much, if any work, is needed to make it workable before you use it for motion development work.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I'll just end this with a couple videos that features some really outstanding examples of MMD animation work. There are probably thousands of other excellent examples out there, but I just included these with no particular bias other than they are drop dead gorgeous works.
