I am also doing some work on toon shaders. Check out "Biyu Biyu Rocket" in the Showcase II section to see a basic cel-vertex shader done in 3DGS. I am downloading that last example you posted... looks interesting. I actually did a conversion of the MSDN one, but its a really bad example because it does not display textures.... makes it nearly imposible to figure out how to.

Here is a shot of my MSDN toon conversion:
[image]http://axelgames.tripod.com/bumpmap.txt[/image]

Here is a shot of Alex Esslinger's toon shader for 3dgs:


Here is a shot of BBR using a modification of Alexander's shader in order to fit my game:


EDIT: I took a look at that 3rd example of toon shading that you posted. That really is a great one, plus he put in some nice doumentation of the actual shader. I am going to give the conversion a whirl, and if its something decent, I'll post it.

Good Luck!