MMD Atlantis Pyramid Stage + Motion D/L

I don't usually entertain unsolicited requests, but being in the habit of reading and responding to every message I get, I read one from a Deviant who shall remain unnamed. It was a simple request really. The person wanted a motion done for this song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYG91I…

So I listened to it and as it turned out I was strangely attracted to the music. It has a most unusual texture and quality so I dug into it more to find that half the lyrics was in a pseudo-African language - basically nonsense. But nonetheless it is very effective and emotive. However, there was a problem with doing a motion for it and this was simply casting for it especially since the singer has a very distinctive African/Caribbean accent . There is a definite lack of "African" models made for MMD and I was dead set against doing an Al Jolson job. The only model that I know of is Nimda (fav.me/d7g3fsg) by Xoriu , but Nimda being a cyber girl, doesn't suit the style of the song.

So it required some thinking 'out of the box'.

In Ancient Greek Mythology, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who ate children; and there is a model of a lamia for MMD: Augusta. (bowlroll.net/file/41188) by Cloud9. And as it turned out, Augusta has her own sun-tanning slider which made her a perfect candidate for this project. The problem with lamias are that half of them is a snake, but that made doing this even more interesting; after all, who could resist creating motions for a creature like this?

So I did the lip sync for the song using Augusta. She looked awesome singing the song so I made a test render for it and forwarded the video to the person who made the request for the motion and haven't heard back from them since. This is one of the reasons why I hate taking requests from people I don't know. Actually it totally pisses me off. It takes hours to do a lip sync for a song and never mind receiving a 'thanks' let alone a response. Sigh.

Fortunately, I had also forwarded the test render to garmus1 , and he was far more responsive to the concept to the point where he graciously agreed to do the video for this project. Honestly, if he didn't step in, I would most likely have ditched the project at this point.

Anyway, since it was decided that we would be using Augusta, she needed a stage and straight off, the concept was to use a pyramid. Well at least the top of a pyramid as I've always wanted to build a pyramid stage for MMD. Augusta being a lamia, using an Atlantis theme suited the concept so I went with that. It only took about an evening to build the stage, but it came out rather decently although in essence it is very simple.

With the stage now done, making the motion was a relatively straight forward task. The song is not complex and has a steady rhythm so I took the line of least resistance and developed a simple loop cycle that gives the motion an African dance style feel. Augusta's tail structure can be problematic, so simple works best anyway. I subsequently discovered, thanks to garmus1 , that there is another lamia model available for MMD: Miia (bowlroll.net/file/79123) by Hinoichi. But, she's more Japanese looking than Augusta so I didn't use her, but she seems to have a better functioning tail structure.

That said, I still needed to make the motion more 'universal' so I reworked it for Tda based structures using the original Miku Append. I know Miku isn't African, but being the 'poser' that she is, my goodness she does a damn good job with the song.

Anyway here are all the important links:

Stage and motion download: bowlroll.net/file/80175

Augusta's rendition of "If I Could Reach Your Heart": youtu.be/lEI5hZLS0Go
See here for password.

Miku version: youtu.be/mshEFlrVPRc

Note1: The stage download includes both the motion for Augusta and Tda-based models.
Note2: Credits are inside the package.
Note3: Many thanks to garmus1 for his assistance with this project!
Note4: After what happened with this project, moving forwards, I absolutely will not entertain requests for stages and motions.