And even if you level your stage exactly at the necessary height, the color will not look natural – even at its best. What it actually does is produce a flat shadow at zero height, regardless of stage’s actual position and terrain – if your surface is at Y<0, the shadow will dangle in the air, and if the stage is higher there will be no shadow visible at all (fig.2). In all other cases, Display ground shadow brings more trouble than it’s worth. There are only two possible reasons to use it: when you make a video without a stage (fig.1), or your computer is really weak and can’t handle more intensive calculations.

The most important thing you must remember about Display ground shadow is HOW TO TURN IT OFF. In the upper half of the list you’ll see “ Display ground shadow” command (and two of its minions – “ Ground shadow color” and “ Transparent ground shadow“). This happens because MikuMikuDance actually has *two* independent systems of shadow rendering and they can conflict if not managed wisely. There are plenty of videos where shadows are simply turned off (quite often, I suspect, because their creators just didn’t like how it turned out and didn’t know how to do better), and there’s a lot of those where the shadows look rather crude demeaning the overall quality of an otherwise good video.

Shadow handling is one of the more confusing elements of MMD. How can I adjust the shadows in MMD? What are popular MMD shadow mistakes and how do I not make them? Can I change the shadows? Why do the MMD model’s shadows look fake, look weird? Shadow business …

Mmd raycast clouds shadow