The winners of the 3rd MMD Cup was announced!

Video of closing ceremony:

The winner is "Yumeno Nakae - Mona Mona Dane"
This character- "Mona" is a legendary AA(Ascii art) character from the anonymous BBS "2channel".

2nd place is "K-ON! Watashi no Koi wa Megalava".
K-ON! is an animation which cute girsl form a band and play music as their club activity,
this video was funny because of the gap between the cute girls and the hard core music this video makes them play.

3rd place is "Dial connected-Tsuki Dokei -Lunar Dial- Touhou PV-"
Touhou is one of the most popular doujin games (I wrote a post about Doujin Game here in the past)

As there are soooo many awards, I won't introduce everything :P

"Theme" section - the first theme is "Seasons" and the winner is:
Vocaloid On Ice - Miku's ICE☆SHOW -

"Seasons Theme" section -  "Scenery award" winner is:
"Tagatameni Hanawasaku"

Next theme is "Future" the theme award winner is this one (which does not allow embedding)

"Special award -QBK award" goes to "Hatsune Miku kicking a ball"

"Special award- Technology award" goes to "Shoku"

Tripshots award goes to "AI-GAN-DOU-BUTU"

AgoAniki award goes to "Aru Datanshi no uta"

Yuka Okada award goes to "Summer Day"

Another excellent MikuMikuDance video, which is one of the participants of the 3rd MMD cup (competition).

The video is Miku's ice skating performance copying Mao Asada- a Japanese top ice skater- and the following is a comparison video (Miku on your left, Mao on right). 

I wrote lots of posts about Hatsune Miku and MikuMikuDance(MMD) in the past, let's take a look at how MMD evolved :) This is the original MMD (VPVP) site.

MMD is a  free tool to create choreography of 3D Miku model.

The evolution of MMD is actually AMAZING. This one is made with MMDver5.0- doing a bunch of physical calculation experiments using MMD.

Let's look at the history and evolution of MMD (this list is only featuring some big changes, there are lots and lots of small minor versions and changes).

Ver1 MMD was simply making Miku dance.
Ver2 enabled to use lightings, change camera settings, add accesories.
Ver3 was recreated from scratch. Added several character models such as Kagamine Ren, Yowane Haku and Akita Neru. Added dummy bone to move accessories. (Meiko model was added as Ver3.01A) Enabled people to create their own models.
Ver4 added twist mode, added local mode (which the object/character is center of the video creation) and global mode (which the environment is center of the video creation).  Miku model ver2 was released. BTW, English mode was added from ver4.03. 
Ver5 physical engine was added!

This is how local mode and global mode differs (the same x-y-z axis of Miku's elbow refer to different direction)

図２）localモード時の空間軸	図３）globalモード時の空間軸

 
Enabling users to create their own models was a fantastic step. This is the summary page of MMD models and there's sooo many now from various VOCALOID series, animes and games. Website of Masa- the original creator of MMD 3DModel, Kio model, Monsters, maid Miku, Black Rock Shooter and many more by Anomaro, Nendroid and many more cute 3D Models by Hachi,and this list will go on and on forever so I'll stop now but it is simply AMAZING. 

From ver 4.03 there is English version which you should definitely check out :D
 

Very cool video using MikuMikuDance as well as photos and effects.
It looks totally different from other MMD videos!

About a year ago, I wrote a post about Miku Miku Dance, which is user generated 3D modeling tool.

Today I encountered a video that uses physical engine called Bullet, which makes the motioins of MMD much more smooth.

The motion of Miku's hair is much more smoother than MMD only version.

MMD version. This is a cute one with chibi-miku :)

There's a lot of singers, dancers, performers etc in NicoNicoDouga world,
I even found a choreographer named Raji-P who creates dances using MikuMikuDance.

If you don't know what MikuMikuDance is, it's a free 3D modeling tool that enabled lots of 3D anime beginners
to create 3D animes for the first time, and this software was made by one of the NicoNico lovers.
Please read my other post:

It looks like Raji-P had become ill or injured (I'm not sure which) and was in the hospital,
and he or she created this video coreography of "White Letter" in the hospital.

Mini-Miku dances to "White Letter" with a dolphin

Miku dances to "White Letter" in the outer space

Mini-Miku dances to "Hakoiri Musume"

It's not only about Hatsune Miku... someone made a model of anime characters of "Keion"
and made a video to dance to "White Letter"

MikuMikuDance -user generated 3D modelling tool- started with only Hatsune Miku as the character,
but it has been developping.... and now there is even a model of Yabeno Hikomaro of the Nico-Nico famous Omyoji video.

Anyways... welcome back from the hospital, Raji-P!

Promotion Video of "I Want To Love You Tender" by Armi Ja Dannyｍ was said to be the most corny PV in the world by a nicochu.

In my last post, I have written how MikuMikuDance(MMD) - a user generated free 3D modelling tool has enabled people to start creating 3D animes.

Then, proposed by Hanya-san, operated by Kanna-san, a video contest called "MikuMikuDance Cup" took place in NicoNicoDouga, where people uploades their videos created with MMD.

Announcement of MMD Cup as follows:

I have written a post on how creators started to make Miku 3D anime videos on this post.

Those videos were created by users who had 3D modelling tools.

After a while, this creator made a tool to create 3D animes and distributed on the website for free, which enabled LOTS of users to try creating 3D animes for the first time. Whilst most of the 3D modelling tools are expensive, this tool was completely free, easy to use (this creator says he has used 3D tool for the first time and made this video within 90 minutes) , and had Miku modelling data by default. As of 2008/8/18, there are 1,822 videos tagged "mikumikudance " in NicoNicoDouga.

Many offered to pay the creator for this tool, which the creator did not accept saying it was not made for the money. This reaction made a new buzz word called "furikomenai-sagi". This comes from a social problem called "Furikome -sagi". "Furikome" means "pay the money to my bank account" and "sagi" means "fraud". Old people got phone calls saying their grandchildren are sick or in trouble and they must pay the money to a certain bank account to help them out. Innocent old people just obeyed what they were told and paid lots of money by this fraud. On the contrast, the creator of MikuMikuDance did not accept any offer to pay- so this was called "Furikomenai-sagi" meaning " I can't pay fraud" as a joke. But seriously, I think this creator deserves donations for this amazing tool.

You can download the tool here free, the website is in English.

You can see the operation tutorial video here: