MikuMikuDance

Pros

• Supports literally hundreds of anime models
• Makes it easy to produce professional-grade animation
• Lets users copy the look of popular anime series

Cons

• May not always work with all PMX-formatted models
• Motion capture is somewhat difficult to accomplish

MikuMikuDance is a 3D animation suite that's designed to allow users to easily create sophisticated 3D movies. It includes models based around Vocaloid characters, though an active online community has sprung up around the software that creates and distributes posable models for use with amateur animation projects. When users import one of these 3D models into a virtual space, they'll be able to position and animate it freely.

On one hand, this makes it easy to create a video that features highly unusual motion patterns. As soon as you get the hang of the way that the physics engine works, however, you shouldn't have too much difficulty creating relatively advanced-looking animated features with it.

All points of articulation are fair game on any model. That means you can change up facial expressions if the model you're working with has the right morphs to do so. Motion data can then be applied to the model's limbs to give it a wider range of motion. Accessories and stage lighting can give a greater feeling of depth to a scene, which is fitting because the software's original usage was to help recording artists create music videos for Vocaloid-based audio tracks.

Budding directors can add lens flares and other effects if they're trying to make a miniature animated feature with the software. An onboard AutoLuminous plugin gives you the freedom to make any object glow or light up. It'll take a few moments to configure the software's interface settings before you're able to make this kind of effect with it, but the end result is more than worth it.

After you've positioned characters just the way you want them, you're free to export this information in the form of VMD and VPD files. Other animation projects can then make use of it in the future. Microsoft Kinect users can attach their hardware to MikuMikuDance, though the motion capture routine can be challenging to work with at times. This shouldn't be too much of a drawback, though, since the MMD community online provides so many models for download that amateur artists might never even need to create something original.

Those who do may find the process quite rewarding, however. MikuMikuDance is merely a posing an animation application that provides AVI export functionality for cartoonists. That means avid users of Blender and other professional-grade open-source animation packages will probably want to import their own models. MMD makes it easy to do so as long as you're working with one of these kinds of packages.

Two additional tools, PMD and PMX Editor, make it possible to add facial morphs and bones to pretty much any sort of anime character you end up adding to MMD.

Pros

• Supports literally hundreds of anime models
• Makes it easy to produce professional-grade animation
• Lets users copy the look of popular anime series

Cons

• May not always work with all PMX-formatted models
• Motion capture is somewhat difficult to accomplish