In 2001 I worked for a startup game company called Vinayak 4D Games.  During one of our endless redesigns, we came up with the idea of giving the game a cartoonish feel.  The technique of rendering 3D objects so that they look hand drawn is called cartoon rendering or cel-shading.  It is perhaps the most exciting style to come out of a category of techniques known as non-photorealistic rendering.  The company eventually went under but I became fascinated with cartoon rendering and continued to perfect the rendering style on my own.

I spent a good deal of time researching cutting-edge techniques to coerce graphics hardware into producing cartoonish images.  I eventually created a combined technique that leveraged the new (at the time) pixel shaders that had recently become available.  This technique worked on graphics hardware that supports first generation pixel shaders, which includes the original x-box.  I posted an article about the technique on GameDev.net and eventually turned the material into a seminar for gameversity.com.  The seminar only ran briefly, so I'm posting the text and source from the seminar for posterity.  Enjoy!

Attachments:

Cartoon Rendering Source.zip	[Source Code For Cartoon Rendering Seminar]	2618 Kb
Textbook Cartoon Rendering.zip	[Textbook in Word Format For Cartoon Rendering Seminar]	63 Kb