i've got a good few models (300k worth) in a scene that I want to render toon shaded, and I've got a toon shader applied to them (ramp material) as soon as I put the viewport into hardware textured mode, maya dies on me. it's as if the toon shader is using a massive ammount of texture resources, even though there are no…
I am sorry as this wot help you with your problem,- but I wanted to share this related tutorial: http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/maya/non_photo_realistic_shading/realistic_shading.asp that uses a interesting approach in toon shading with maya