[Guide] First steps with VMDPlay plugin or how to import MMD (Miku Miku Dance) animations into HS2
For sure, there must be out there people who, like me, likes to see pretty girls dancing. Speaking about 3D world, Miku Miku Dance (or MMD) is a well known free program that let's you edit dance animations I won't say easily but , at least, with an affordable effort. Due to this, there is a lot of animations in the public domain that can be used for anyone. The files containing this animations bears the extension .vmd. (But beware, not all .vmd files are dance animations, I clarify that later).
Despite HS2 comes with a lot of dance animations too (thanks to their creators and the never enough acknowledged Screw This Noise and his repacks), one have never sufficient of them, so the idea of import MMD animations into HS2 which multiplies the available number of dances is indeed a great idea, and hence, the VMDPlay plugin. I don´t know at this moment who is the author of the plugin but, if you are interested, I'm sure a quick search will give you the answer.
However, as many things with HS2, the plugin management can be discouraging at first since it looks complex (and, if you dig enough in it, it is), but a simple use is not that complex and (again as many things with HS2) you probably only need a little guidance into the first steps to be able to manage it for yourself. That's the intention of this my first tutorial (well, kind of).
First thing you need, of course, is to install the plugin. You can find it into the optional plugins folder in HS2 and I assume you know how to install it. Second thing to have is some .vmd file if you want to animate something. They are not very difficult to find if you google it a little, though I miss some kind of repository where one can find them reunited... At the end of the tutorial, I will include some address where you can download some (I wish to include one as an example, but the .vmd extension is not allowed here to attach files).
Once installed, remember that you can access the plugin settings by pressing F1. It is not necessary to change anything by now, but later maybe you want to tune some things there. At this time, what you need is some character to animate, so load one into Studio right now and select it. The .vmd files (or the plugin) make no differences between boys and girls, so it's up to you.
And now, we invoke the plugin (as if it was an ancient god) by pressing the magic combination ctrl + shift + v, et voilà. An UI (user interface) box must have appeared in the left side and you will see the name of your character there, this is the configuration box. Also you can see a bottom line with the main controls of the plugin (this line could be made to autohide), including a button to close the UI box when you are ready.
In the box, you find three tabs named Character, Camera and Sound, but, for reasons that I will explain later, we will work just with the first tab. First at all, we must click on the button "Off" to get our character enabled (to me, it looks a little strange to mark Off to get the things On, but the plugin is a little tricky in some aspects... just my opinion). Now, we have access to a lot of options but, don't panic! we will use actually very few of them. The most important is, of course, the input box labeled VMD, there you must select the .vmd file you are going to use, so it's time to search for it in your hard disk using the button "..." beside the input box. Find it and select it.
Once you see your .vmd file in the input box, is mandatory to press the "Load" button: the plugin is not smart enough as to guess that, if you selected that file, is that file which you want to load... Then you will see your character adopt the most basic pose, with the arms open wide, the "T" pose, that means that she knows already the choreography and is ready to dance. The last step now is to press the play button and the dance will begin (commonly after a few seconds). By the way, you can chain more animations using the button "+".
Note: Besides the "On/Off" button there is another button labeled (All) that alterns between All and Face. This is because you can control also the face animation, apart from the included in the animation file, which could be useful if you plan to take close-ups of the animation. In the BepInEx -> Plugins -> HS2_VMDPlayPlugin folder you will find some examples of how to do it.
And this is the basic, with that elements you could begin to enjoy with your characters movements. However, there are a lot of warnings and advices I must mention. Surely, you must miss something important: the music. What is a dance without the music? Well, if you remember, there is a tab in the IU called Sound, if you go there you will find another input box where you can search for a music file in your hard disk the same way you search for the .vmd file (don't forget to press Load after you select it!). However, the plugin only admit files in the .wav format which is not very common out there (since it is a non compressed format, the .wav files are way bigger -around ten times- than the equivalent .mp3, so they are not favourited for distribution), of course, you can convert .mp3 files (or whatever format) to .wav, there is a lot of free programs that does it, but it is a job which I sincerely thinks doesn't worth: there are better options, IMHO. By the way, if you try to use the sound option from Studio you will face the same problem, with the add-on of the lack of sinchronicity.
My best advice at this point is to export a video with your dance and edit it by adding the music later with a video edition program. It's easier and, anyway, also doesn't worth to open the Studio and load the animation every time you want to see it once you have it finished, it consumes a lot of time usually. And another thing I have learnt is that, altough the right thing is to use the song that animation was made for, actually there are a lot of songs that fit quite well with any animation you find, check it if you don't believe me. (And have in mind that you can manipulate the speed of the animation as well as that of the music). All this, obviously, unless you are a professional of the dance in which case you can call me heretic.
Another point. If you look under the input box in the character tab you will see two sets of buttons "Play" "Pause" "Stop" and yes, you guess it, it is possible to have as many characters dancing as your computer can handle, hence the words (Player) - only the character selected- and (All) -everybody-.
However, beware, you must repeat the complete process explained up there for each character you want to add, which is a little annoying, I know (you must use the couple of arrows beside the character name to do that). In exchange, it gives you the interesting option to combine several choreographies in the same scene.
I said before that .vmd files are not only dance animations, and also that there is a tab in the config UI named Camera. And yes, sure you guess it right again: .vmd files can contain also camera movements to play togheter with the dance animation. These camera movements are built separately from the animation and are the result of the artistic conception of the author, something like the work of the director in a TV program, so you can find as many camera files as artists are out there. An easy way to tell apart animation files from camera files (if it is not indicated in the name), is the size, usually camera files have a very little size, about 2-3 kb, while animation files are considerably bigger, from 50-60 Kb to several Mb. You can load camera files into the Camera tab, and it will works... but not works, actually. The reason is that camera movements are designed for a particular stage or surrounding so, when you include them in your scene they doesn´t fit at all and use to be useless.
A last warning. It is important to know that animation files interferes with FK/IK of the character without it is been reflected in the Studio -> Kinematics tab. The consecuence is that, after the animation ends, you won't be able to assign any pose or animation to your character until you deselect it (now you must click "On" button) in the UI box.
And a bonus track: you can pause the animation at any moment, save the scene (better with only the character/s) and Import it later to use it as a static pose at any other scene.
That's all, folks, I hope that you could find all this useful and, please, excuse my limited English. Also, I wish to encourage you to explore beyond and turn back here to explain us all what you find out.
Some sites to get .vmd files (the first one is a little outdated, so many links are broken):