The Z-toon method was my idea and there is a tutorial in Renderosity's tutorial section that explains how it works. Ockham made a script that makes it much faster to set up your scene (I don't know anything about scripting so I had to flatten each object manually).  :)

I have constantly been trying to achieve a 2D drawn look in 3D, but with limited success. Accurate toon shading is practically impossible in 3D, even the plugins for Carrara can't match what you can do by hand. It seems like you can get the best results by rendering a fairly "flat" 3D figure with as little shading as possible and no toon outlining, and then shading and inking in Photoshop, Painter, or Manga Studio.  As far as which figures to use, Aiko (at DAZ), BelBel for Aiko (at DAZ), Anime Doll (custom figure, available here at Renderosity), and Aiko Toon (Aiko-based figure, available at DAZ) are the best in my opinion.

Hope that's of some use.  ;)

SnowS

my DeviantArt page: http://snowsultan.deviantart.com/

 

I do not speak as a representative of DAZ, I speak only as a long-time member here. Be nice (and quit lying about DAZ) and I'll be nice too.