"Hair shadows look like a helmet." Solution: In PMX Editor, separate the hair's front, back, and sidelocks into different "Material groups." Assign them slightly different toon IDs so the shadow cuts at different angles.
Remember: Great cel shading is not about realism; it is about abstraction . It is about deciding where the light doesn't go as much as where it does. By controlling shadow steps, normal vectors, and rim lighting, you can make MMD produce images indistinguishable from hand-drawn animation.
Light creates a smooth gradient from bright white to deep black. Skin looks soft and oily; metals look reflective.
In Ray Controller -> Environment -> Set Ambient Intensity to 0.0 . Anime exists in a void; there is no soft bounce light.
Light is divided into distinct bands: "Bright," "Base," and "Shadow." The transition between light and dark is a sharp line, not a blur. This mimics the limited color palette of traditional 2D animation.
"The toon shadow lines are jagged/aliased." Solution: Under the Display tab in Ray Controller, turn on Anti-aliasing (FXAA) to High. Also, render at 1920x1080 even if your final is 720p; downscaling smooths cel edges.
The default MMD renderer (DirectX 9) uses a very basic "Toon" texture (usually a PNG file with a gradient ramping from white to black). This is a fake toon shader. It works, but it cannot react dynamically to moving lights. If you spin a light around a model using the default shader, the shadow will not move correctly.
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