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I was watching a 1990's Sci Fi movie on YouTube the other day, specifically the video embedded below. The acting is "so-so"; but the plot is decent and the special effects are definitely "old school". Still it was fun to watch; especially since these days the special effects are all done using CGI. Nothing wrong with CGI, but seeing space and space crafts in the movie using real physical models has a charm about it.

As I watched I was thinking how one would go around doing stuff like this MMD; because in reality you can. Thinking it through, interestingly enough, my thoughts were that to do it in MMD, it would be easiest to do it using "old school" techniques.
Why?
That is an excellent question and the answer is very simple: it is a question of scale. Space, the Final Frontier, is huge. MMD is made to focus on small spaces. Yes, there are stages available for cities and broad swathes of landscapes but in the end, all of those are experienced by both the animators and the viewers as a very small portion of the available space.

Specifically, more or less the area defined by the axis grid in the MMD graphical UI. When you try to operate outside of that space you end up having to use workarounds just to comfortable move around and do things.

Spaceships are huge. The ones in Sci Fi movies and anime are usually humongous. Something like Star Trek's USS Enterprise, the original version or it's later reiterations can't even be seen in the MMD UI unless you pull the view way back and then how are you going to animate it?

Arguably, MMD can only handle something as small as the one of the shuttle crafts from the USS Enteprise, but even that type of spacecraft is fairly large. But even the USS Enteprise from the Star Trek franchise needs to dock and the space dock in the movie is as large as a small city. So how would you do a scene like that using MMD?

But if you use the "old school" techniques and the same cinematic tricks that the movie studios use, any size of spacecraft can be easily handled using MMD. Not only that, it makes it easy even to animate space battles with ships firing laser cannons, jumping in and out of hyperspace, docking at gigantic space stations or whatever else you could possibly imagine.

You can even show the action from the Vocaloid actor's perspective, such as from the command bridge or engine room of a massive space battlecruiser.

The whole trick is to scale all the big things down and keep the details "real life" sizes. So you will need a ton of models, but unlike a Hollywood studio which is constrained by budgets, as a MMD movie director, all your resources are free. Mind you, you're probably going to need many different models to make even a short movie, but fortunately there are plenty of sci fi type models available including a wide range of suitably attired Vocaloid models. If you can build some of these models yourself, you have even more options.

But modeling space is very broad subject; so I will just narrow it down so that you have a gist of just what is possible. I will just outline certain visual scenarios and apply "crude" solutions as to how they can be done. Just enough to give you an idea as to how some of these things might be done.

SCENE 1: Docking your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer with a space port.
SCENE 2: Orbiting your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer around a planet.
SCENE 3: Flying your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer near an asteroid field.
SCENE 4: Flying your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer into a worm hole.
SCENE 5: Firing your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer's laser cannons.
SCENE 6: Scenes aboard your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer.

Before describing any of these scenarios, there are some principles about movie making that you need to be aware of:

You are the director; your job is to show scenes that best illustrates the narrative. In many anime, they use a very simple trick to establish the location of a scene. Take for example a highschool scene. First they show a still picture of the school building; then they cut over to the scenes which involve the characters. So the viewer immediately knows exactly where this part of the narrative occurs.

Scale down big things. Just as a full size space battlecruiser won't fit inside a real camera's view neither will a full size model of the same battlecruiser fit inside the MMD viewport. So use a smaller version of the model. In movie studios, the models of really large spaceships are at most only a couple of feet long. Use the same thinking when using large spaceship models in MMD. You can scale models down easily using the PMD/PMX Editor.

Sometimes to establish the size of a big space; you only need to show a part of that space. The rest of the space can be inferred by the viewer just using this simple principle. Many of the illustrations used in this article uses this very principle.

So without further ado, let us briefly examine how to do the scenes listed above.

SCENE 1: Docking your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer with a space port.

You will need the following:

A sky dome or background matte of the part space where the scene occurs.

A model of the space dock.

A model of your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer.

Both spaceship models need to be scaled down to an easily workable size. If your space dock is really humongous, you only that portion of it that can be seen. Since the sky dome and space dock never needs to move; animating something like this scene is really easy. Just animate the space destroyer. Add MME for more realistic effect. Most likely, all you need is just auto-luminous or object-luminous; since space is dark, the viewer's eyes will automatically be drawn to anything that has lights and if you carefully apply this concept, you can do some really effective and convincing scenes.

SCENE 2: Orbiting your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer around a planet.

This is even easier. You only need one model; your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer, suitably scaled down of course. Planets are generally pretty big and trying to put one into MMD would be a stupid thing to do even if it was a simple textured sphere. All you need is a background matte with a part of the planet visible.

The space destroyer would be easiest to animate on a circular or parabolic path if it has two mother bones. How this works is this: Add two mother bones to the space destroyer's model. One mother bone is the primary mother bone and the second is the "child" of the primary mother bone. Once this association is set up, the rest is easy. Place the primary mother bone at the center point of the rotation. Use the secondary mother bone to locate the model. To create your orbital path, simply rotate the primary mother bone.

By the way, this scene assumes that you're only showing a partial orbit; you only need to show this to establish the narrative that the spacecraft is orbiting the entire planet. In real life, even when a spacecraft is orbiting a planet at hundreds of miles per hour, the perception is that it is not moving much, if at all.

So one of the key tricks here is that sometimes, to imply that an object in space is moving at great speed, it is not even necessary to actually move the object at all or only enough to suggest that it is actually moving.

SCENE 3: Flying your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer near an asteroid field.

This is actually really easy to do.

You will need one or more background mattes showing the asteroid field. The spacecraft model and may be one of two lumps of rocks to simulate nearby asteroids. The rest is left to imagination. Just put your spacecraft into the scene; it won't even have to move; some times just moving the camera is sufficient to create the illusion. Making a small handful of small asteroids drift by at a sensible speed may help reinforce the illusion.

Likewise; if you want to be more sophisticated and want to create the illusion that your spacecraft is actually flying through the asteroid field; most of the scene is just a background image. Just have some really large rock models and move those. The spacecraft itself in terms of MMD space, doesn't need to move at all.

SCENE 4: Flying your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer into a worm hole.

Likewise making a hyperspace jump scene is really easy and once again the spacecraft model doesn't need to move much at all. You use an AVI background that shows the hyperspace effect.

As the spacecraft begins its jump, apply object-luminous to the entire model at full strength for a moment and then hide the effect and the spacecraft model. You can also combine it with the object-luminous after effect MME and move the spacecraft model slightly to trigger the effect and you will have something very similar to your classic spacecraft jumping into hyperspace scene.

Using a star-gate for the jump is easily done too. In its simplest form, apply object-luminous to the displacement field – and we're assuming here that the displacement field on the star-gate model is an actual plane.

Simply move the spacecraft model into the displacement field and it can disappear and re-appear quite realistically and you would not even need to break a sweat doing this. Combining some type of burst effect with the ship model can serve to make this type of scene look even more credible.

SCENE 5: Firing your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer's laser cannons.

Building a model of a laser cannon beam is really easy. You just need either a simple tube model or even just a simple rectangle. You will apply either object-luminous or auto-luminous to this model. The beam model needs two bones. One bone is used to attach the beam model to the spacecraft's laser cannon; the other bone is used to stretch it out. It's best to set up a facial to do the stretch. This keeps it's orientation in the direction that the firing occurs regardless of the actual position of the spacecraft model.

To fire the laser, simply stretch it out and retract it again very quickly. The color of the beam model determines the color of the lighting effect.
All very easy to do; if you set up camera right and the timing, it will look very realistic.

SCENE 6: Scenes aboard your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer.

Let's assume that your Vocaloid heroine's space destroyer is really large. Something the length of a real life naval destroyer. At this size you can actually fit it full size into MMD, but for a lot of scenes you will probably want a scaled down version of the same model.

But what you don't need is models for every space inside the space destroyer in order to convince viewers that the spacecraft is huge.
For interior scenes, depending on your script, you might only need a model of the bridge and any interior space where you have a scene such as an engine room. To create the illusion that these are all connected all you need is just one more model: some type of connecting corridor stage.
So let's say Captain Miku wants to go from the control room to the engine room. First show a scene of her in the control room. Then show her in the corridor. Finally show her in the engine room.

This is exactly the method that they use in most Star Trek episodes. You can create the illusion of being in a much larger space simply by only showing small parts of it and connecting the scenes in a logical sequence.

Well that more or less sums up some of the tricks that real movie makers use to create Sci Fi space scenes and how similar methods can be applied in MMD. If you watched that movie I embedded at the top of this article; you can see exactly some of these techniques at work and see how effective they can be when properly executed.
There are tons of Sci Fi related stages and models for MMD as well as all types of effects for simulating Sci Fi effects using MMEs. All that is required is to use you imagination to mix these together cleverly to make your own Sci Fi animations. Maddoktor2 has some more conventional space models in his gallery such as the space shuttle model shown here. So you can start there. For more Sci Fi type models of all types; the best places to look are DeviantArt, NicoNico and Bowlroll. For Sci Fi MME effects; the best starting point is BeamMan's blog .

Thanks for reading and just look at the Miku image at the top of this article. That scene of her was set up in MMD using just her model alone. The rest of the scene is simply a still from a Star Trek movie. You don't need to build an entire space port just to create an illusion that Miku is in one.

Note: To animate a Vocaloid flying a space fighter such as a Star Wars vintage X-wing fighter, F-16 Falcon or the Martian Aero Racer I built requires a radically different set of considerations as with these types of vehicles, they are small enough to be shown in their entirety together with their pilots. I will cover how to do animations like these in a separate article as it is really interesting how these can be done.

Acknowledgements:

Many thanks to the wonderful artists on DA whose works are illustrated here. Please be sure to click on the images to visit their galleries. The works of artists like these really helps us to see future worlds and fires our imaginations.