Effective toon ink rendering for episodic television
Author(s): Gordon Farrell, Julia Taylor-Hell, F. David Fracchia.
Proceedings: Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH 2003, Sketches & applications,
2003.
[BibTeX] 
Abstract:
When producing episodic CGI television series, time and
budgetary restrictions require that renders be both fast and as
error-free as possible. Faced with series that demanded a cartoonstyle
look, we first evaluated existing technology. Our primary
renderer is mental images’ ray tracer, mental ray. Applicable
commercial toon shaders performed well in simple cases, but were
far too slow and offered too few artistic controls and rendering
options. As a result we developed a toon ink shader fast, effective,
and flexible enough to meet all of our production needs. The
sections to follow outline several rules and methods we borrowed
and developed in order to maximize flexibility and accuracy while
minimizing render time.