Here's the Maya scene file, just so you get an idea of the toplogy and model in place. This model is a demo file, courtesy of Pixologic, makers of Zbrush.
The Material assigned is a simple Blinn, although any of the standard Maya materials will do nicely. I have the color and diffuse pretty bright, with even a hint of ambient color added as well. There are no lights in the scene, and I'm not rendering with any GI, FG, IP, AO, IBL, or HDRI, although I could. I have selected my camera, gone into the attribute editor, and altered the Background Enviornment Color as well to a light gray.
Here you see that I have gone into my Blinn Material's Shading Group node and entered the Contours tab. I have turned on "Enable Contour Rendering" here in the shader. I have left the Alpha at 1.00, an the width I have set to 0.05 for now. Before we render, we will have to establish similar settings in our Render Settings Window.
STEP
3:
Here you can see I have gone into the Render Settings Window. In the Features Tab (Maya 2009+) I have enabled Contour Rendering. I have left the Oversample at 1 and the Filter type to BOX for now. Since I want to show the wireframe of the model's topology, I have checked "Draw by Property Difference": "Around all poly faces".
STEP
4:
When I render, notice how crappy-jagged the wireframe is! Lets fix this. Up the Over-Sample to 3, and set the filter to Gaussian:
render again. Much smoother looking now! Compare (new on left):
We are now essentially done. Take a look at step 5 and 6 for more options.
STEP
5:
Lets tweak some more settings. If I turn down the alpha (in the shading group) and up the width, I can make it look like crap!!! Wide lines look stupid.
STEP
6:
If I want to composite this with another render, I might want to remove the shading:
