In the last thread some people were asking about making high quality renders in MMD. It's more work explaining this than I thought so I guess most of you guys should just figure out how to use NCHL.
http://syazwan133.deviantart.com/art/How-to-use-apply-NCHLShader2-487524122Some dude on dA made a retard proof tutorial, but the truth is that there's way more options for NCHL and you should familiarize yourself with how to tinker with effects in the accessories tab.
There's lots of other good effects like diffusion (use responsibly), SvSSAO, HgSSAO, svDOF, but I'd recommend using one at a time to figure out how to use them and manipulate them. PostRimLighting is ok in some situations.
Also don't be afraid to open up PMX editor and mess with the material properties. You have to remove sphere maps anyways to make NCHL work properly anyways.
Also remember to use MMD 9.0 or above that has fshadow option with the newest MME, and bump the window size up and downscale back down in PSD to deal with aliasing. Although if you have a toaster you'll just run out of memory so ignore everything I said if that's the case.
NCHL might not be right for you but for god's sake. Please stop using default no MME. SeriousShader for example is not nearly as complicated as NCHL (granted not as good either), so if you don't like the hassle of configuring NCHL then try the latest SeriousShader or something. Good luck and get good! Also what happened to my starter pack torrent.