MMD SFX Stage

This started off as both a 3D doodle and a series of unplanned events. I was bored one evening and just opened up SketchUp to muck around and with some half baked ideas on building an stage with Append gear styling; hoping to stumble on a design that did not need massive amounts of texture work and roughed out about 3 to 4 different stages that were complete enough in terms of form to export to MMD.

I loaded Miku Append and some random motions and just watched to see how they would work and none really captured my imagination. Either they were too common place, boring or looks too much like stuff that I've already built and completed. So I doodled some more and this time, instead of building a stage I just built a decorative stage accessory; a design element that I term a "pylon". This sort of item usually gets added to my library of parts and at some point gets added to a project.

The part in question is the key feature of this stage design but it almost ended up in the recycle bin. In the first place it was
originally built much too big. I only realized this when I loaded it in the PMD Editor and realized that it would have dwarfed
your average Vocaloid. So I reduced it 50% and finished the material specs on it and added some VMDSpectrum compliant
morphs. It was then loaded into MMD and I reloaded Miku Append as well. Well there was nothing "Append" about the
pylon, but for some reason Miku liked it...

So Miku pushed it back 1.5 meters on the MMD axis and put herself in front of it. Took a look at it and then she said that it
looked like it would topple over as it seemed top heavy. So with a sigh I built the pylon a tripod footing and added that to the existing model in SketchUp.

Loading it back up in MMD, Miku looked at it again and wanted more 'spheres', so I added 3 more and back it went into
MMD for Miku to look at again. She was happy with it and danced around it for awhile but then suddenly she had a light bulb moment. You can always tell when she has a light bulb moment. Her lights start flashing.

And her bright idea was to make it a complete stage in itself. I had a whole list of objections, but she was adamant that it
would work. As she put it, it didn't need to be a big stage. The pylon in itself was an interesting design and would look lost as a component in a larger stage, but if it became the focus element on a small intimate stage, it could work well as an accent deco, she argued.

So I finished it and even gave it a dance floor that I knew that Miku would like. The floor pattern although it matched the cold steel look of the hi tech design had organic elements to give it a softer ambience. It works really well with the overall design, especially when the WorkingFloor effect is added to it to give it some shine. Just take a look at the texture map I made for the floor. For something that I did in about 10 minutes it came out really well and really is a really nice patterned floor texture design.

Well once the stage was completed, Miku wanted to use it so we found a nice motion for her and then set it up for a full
render. The song choice is unusual for this type of stage design as it is a very melodic love song; one would usually expect
that this style of stage would be deployed with much more upbeat and dynamic musical pieces. However, one of the design criteria for a small intimate stage design is that it should be able to work with any performance in which the performer has a much more intimate engagement with the viewers.

Well anyway, the stage can be downloaded at the link given below. Miku does want you to go see her video showing her
using this stage. We're not going to force anyone to see the demo video by playing a silly password game, but you should
have a peep anyway because apart from anything else, it really does show you how this stage design was intended to work. It does help set the mood but without distracting the performance, which is exactly what a good stage design should do.

Stage download: bowlroll.net/file/100367

Demo video: youtu.be/yPI5yFmaWvc

Instruction sheet: 
(This is included with the download)