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For MMD new users - Short guide

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Literature Text

Hi there! This is Arkenidae, the girl who had some problems with the user alyallie some time ago. This guide is dedicated to all the new users in the MMD community in order to avoid you guys to make mistakes like editing models without permission and putting up not good pose packs.

I'm making this, also, because nobody made one before (as long that I know). The lack of info generates drama by random experienced users making mean comments on illegal edits of Nanami models, for example. Sometimes, the new user has no idea of what is wrong. This makes people go away from the community, thinking that we're trolls, bullies or bad people.

This guide constains some love for you, new user of this awesome software. You must know that I only bite if someone provokes me.

By the way, my english isn't that perfect because I'm not a native speaker and I never get more english classes than what my school/college offered. (We had lots of classes just speaking of the verb 'to be' without working on learning vocabulary. We had also lots of teacher changes and one of them didn't teach us anything for like 3 months)I learnt mostly on internet or playing games. Sorry if this guide has some mistake, still learning.

I'll try to make things sound clear.


So, starting.

Starting

After you download this awesome things that's MMD, you feel the urge to make pictures and small animations to post on places like youtube, tumblr and here. Your posing skills aren't perfect as long that you just started. But you want to post it to say "Hi! I'm using MMD now, LOLOLOLOL". That's okay, we don't care about this since you'll be better on future, I guess.

But other people won't like your stuff at first.

You'll notice things as:

- People saying that your posing skills sucks.
- People telling you to turn the edge line off.
- People ranting about the lack of background.
- People asking you to turn the axis off
- People saying random things like "Kawaii desu moderu"
- Constructive and negative critiques.
- You didn't get comments or favorites.

First of all, don't be sad. This happens with everyone who starts. It happened with me and mostly of my friends. And it still happens at times.
If you got any of these things, be calm and call Batman and take it slow. Don't call they by ugly names, neither flag comments as spam. You'll end up starting a drama this way (You can read about this a bit below).
If people asks you to turn off stuff and you don't have any idea of how you should make it, be calm, nice and ask them how you do that. Like:

"Sorry, I'm new to MMD. Can you please tell me how to turn edge line off? ^w^"

Always, be polite. Nobody told me how to turn off edge lines 'cause I never asked anyway. I ended up figuring it out by myself. It's a pretty tip from me to you to explore the software before putting pictures up. If you already posted and figured something out by yourself later, tell to people that you didn't know when you posted.

Posing isn't easy, you know. People comments that too. You will get lots of "That's not acurate because blablablabla". Be calm and pratice more. When you're a started, I recommend you to don't give out things like pose packs and motions. People wouldn't use them and they will be mean or "I don't care and will never download". I saw some people that experienced that. It's not nice.

You need to judge the critiques that people makes. There's critiques like:

"Omg, it's ugly you should pose her hands!", a not good one.
"It looks nice, but if you pose the hands it would be more pretty", a polite good one.

Don't be mean and accept the critiques. Try to be better on the next picture and keep working. I personally don't like pictures without posing in the hands. It's hard, I know. But MMD comes with four default poses for hands. If you don't have experience with hands, you can use those.

Also, just for you guys to know: The default models are called Animasa. Some, as Miku v2, Rin Act2 and Meiko are M2. The Sakine Meiko is made by Kio.

By posting stuff you'll casually find PMDe and all of it's goodies. But before editing stuff to make your characters and stuff, you should notice the rules.

Rules

Utau has rules. Vocaloid3 has rules. Youtube has rules. dA has rules. Public places has rules. Everything rules (woot). The rules aren't here to hurt you. They're here to make things more organizated and nice. Respecting them will make people respect you even better.

Rules generally comes in .txt file, generally in japanese. If you aren't okay with reading it like this, throw it on a Google Translate and let it do the work.

There's actually conditions for some models that can be:

- Editing and Distributing is free. (Like default models and mostly of Nakao)
- Editing is free, distributing is a no-no. (Like Kanaha's models)
- Don't mess with this in PMDe. (Win100%, Melonbooks, Nanami and some others)
- Ask for both editing and distributing. (ISAO, Kakomiki and some)
- Ask for distributing, editing is okay. (Like some people on dA, some japanese modelers)
- Models with confuse readme. Like Rhea. Some people edit, but if the model maker doesn't approve of your edit you'll have to take responsability. Redistributing isn't recommended.

Be sure to read the rules and make sure to edit only legal things. Or you get comments like:

"YOU EDITED NANAMI. OMG, TAKE THIS DOWN! YOU CAN'T DO THAT"
"KAKOMIKI WILL BE FURIOUS! YOU S** OF A B****!"

Those mean people. I experienced that once. Make sure to make only legal things. If you aren't sure about what you should edit, ask in MMD groups or to some experienced user. Keep being polite. Like:

"Hi, sorry to bother you, but do you know if Rhea is editable? ^^"
"Yes, but don't redistribute that |D"

Some people will ignore you. Don't be mean, neither keep asking. Go to ask in another place. If you need to be really sure, ask to more than a person. If you got extremely different answers, don't edit. Go to find another model.

And again, when editing, take all the good critiques to improve. Be sure to read lots of tutorials. They're helpful.

People on dA makes lots of edits too. Some of them put rules on the models. To edit these, be sure to know if they're editable or contact the user to ask that. Be polite always. Polite persons get everything.

Asking for models

You see a pretty model and want it. There's some tips while asking for a model.

- Make sure that the model isn't a Windows100%, Melonbooks or a not-redistributable one.
- There's a list of those on the mmdinfo website.
- Make sure that it's not a selfmodel or a private OC. You can still ask for OCs, but people generally don't give them to random new stragers. Asking for selfmodels that aren't up for public isn't nice too.
- Search in people's gallery. If you don't find a link, ask.
- Some people will say "NO". Be calm and try searching in other place.
- You can find stuff on VPVP wiki and mmdinfo too.
- Never ask people saying that you need it for a edit. People won't give you models this way.
- If someone gives their selfmodel, be sure to ask before taking that desu kawaii bomber jacket of theirs. Same goes for OCs.

What's Windows100%?

Windows100% is a monthly japanese magazine that comes with a MMD model by some famous modelmaker. There's models like ISAO's Kitty'ers, Kio's Lily, Mamama's SeeU and a few more.

It's a paid magazine, but yet some users trade the models to get older ones and the ones that they don't have. They trade for some Nanami models sometimes, but you should avoid trying to trade for random ones like Nakao's and Animasa's. And being all loud like "I'm trading Win100% models WEEE" isn't cool. Try to be silent about if you're going to do that.

There's also Melonbooks. It's not a magazine like Win100%, but they sell models too. And people trades those too.

Tips for PMD recolours, edits and OCs / selfmodels

- Don't make things go all rainbow for first  time. Make sure to control this urge.
- Avoid putting demon, animal and other features on models and making ask things like "Ask Demon!Kotetsu" or "Ask Cat!Spain". Mostly people don't like that.
- Avoid making models with pink hair, cat ears, tail, short clothes, random story and calling them your selfmodel. This is dangerous.
- Avoid recolouring parts with textures in PMD. Recolour the texture in a image editor. Or ask someone out there to do that.
- Avoid using the same face for lots of OCs. This makes your gallery looks pathetic. Also, if you use the same face for your OCs, people will start thinking that they're the same character.
- Avoid rezing Adult bases into chibis and children. Ewww.
- Avoid brighter colours.
- Careful with the Bone Monster. If you have no idea of how to deal with the Bone Monster, check around dA for some nice tutorials.
- 3DCG may be hard to deal if you're only starting with PMDe. Be careful while using, sometimes it doesn't looks nice. Same for PL2, due the quality of the textures. And game rips parts. (Like The Sims)
- Avoid making your OC/selfmodel way too similar to some Vocaloid/Utau/Anime Character. People will notice and say things like "OMG, SeeU <3". You won't like that to happen, I guess.

Tips for MME usage

- MME or MikuMikuEffect allows you to insert nice shadding, make it rain hearts and lots of nice magical things. It only works on the DirectX new versions of MMD.
- You can combinate effects to generate a better thing. Like using Diffusion and SSAO at same time.
- Some effects need the SelfShadow to be on. If you're having problems, try to turn it on or off.
- Avoid filling your picture only with Autoluminous. It's not nice and doesn't make your gallery cool.
- Try using stages or backgrounds that match with the picture / video. MME won't fix the look of it if things don't match.

What's a Drama?

Drama happens when someone does something really stupid and others come around to rant about or give their opinions. This ends up on people focusing on that and posting about everywhere. Drama's sometime necessary to make the community more lively, but please, avoid it.

Ways to make a drama starts:

- Calls a person out by ugly names from NO REASON. (Meh, really)
- Editing stuff without permission or editing models that shouldn't be edited.
- Claiming stuff as your own when you didn't make those.
- Giving out bad ballet poses.
- Ranting about EVERYTHING. (Sometimes it's totally okay)
- Having bad luck. Very bad luck.
- Suffering from fate.
- Calling edits outta there as ugly and bad made.
- Being too direct. (It's okay sometimes, but yet)
- Don't getting a model and being a crybaby over it.
- Giving no-redistributable stuff out.
- By terrible asking forms.
- By not being polite.
- By calling people's moms by random ugly names.
- Crying a river 'cause they said that your pink animasa recolour isn't good.
- Rants directed to a specific person.
- Waking up with the wrong foot.
- You rant more than you post pictures.
- Calling no-bully persons as bullies.
- By being a drama starter and coming back to the community using the same name.
- Stealing original ideas. (Figma doesn't count)
- Some other random way.

Also, if you received a critique that you don't want, just ignore it. Don't rant over it. This makes things worse.

Some users are kinda crazy, try to deal with that. Sometimes isn't their faults. They are persons too. They have social life out of MMDC and also, feelings. They can be extressed or having bad days. That's normal.

If you aren't sure about posting something, don't do it. And never try to hurt people, yet that you hate them. That ruins the groups and community.
If you aren't completely sure about your english skills for being from a no-english-place, like France, Netherlands, Brazil or Russia, show that by saying "Sorry for the bad english ^^". You can have personal reasons for a bad english too, but people won't mind if you keep polite and respecting the rules.

You can also end up making friends with same interests and having SO. MUCH. FUN. :3

Good luck for you.
For the experienced users, I accept sugestions to make this guide better. If you see stuff missing, please, tell me.
For the MMD community with love.

If something is missing on this guide, please tell me.
I want to make community better for both veterans and newcomers ;v;

Like a "Make tea, not war" thing.
In this case a "Make models, not war" thing.

I would make the second part of the AutoLuminous Tutorial, but Photoshop turned it's "Hate mode" on xD

EDIT (May, 23rd) : I added things :3
© 2012 - 2024 Arkenidae
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CBG3D's avatar

Hello there "Arkenidae, the girl who had some problems with the user alyallie".


I am sorry Drama made it's way to your doorstep, but I want to add, I am glad it did.


Weird I know. Please hear me out.


It is because of the said "DRAMA" you were inspired to make this for us newcomers into the MMD model scene. So, in a way that person was your catalyst to create something from that moment. Perhaps if you ever do speak to one another again, please tell them I am thankful the two of you met. It created a wonderful read for us newcomers. Thank you to both of you.


Also, and I do not intend this to be rude only helping build onto what you left here for us....


If ever you want to work up an edit and English clean up please ask. I am more than happy to help you revitalize this great introduction into the world of MMD modeling. And perhaps even re-post this post back to the top of the forums for faster viewing.