Take me out? - 4K Wallpaper + Composite Breakdown (Patreon)

In addition, here's a layer breakdown of the rendering, as well as a 4K version of the wallpaper itself! Since I get a lot of PMs from animation students I'm aware that there's a couple of people interested in these! The wallpaper you see here is compromised of 4 layers. For the final animation I tend to export a few more to have additional control, but for this one, 4 layers where enough to properly build the image.

The first layer includes the environment pass, as well as Zoe without her elaborate fur shading. It's important to already include a basic version of Zoe here, mainly to show her influence on the environment in form of shadow casting, reflections, etc. The second layer then is an isolated render of Zoe alone, minus the environment. Since rendering both the environment and Zoe with her elaborate fur will crash the graphics driver, I've separated the workload by splitting up the image. Since the second image includes an alpha channel (I recommend Tiff 16 or 32), you can basically put the second image onto the first and get the same rendering result as if you did everything in one pass, minus your graphics cards dying. The same is done for the volumetric pass, which is put out by using a different renderer. Since there's no inclusion of fur, I have to use the depth pass to get a proper cutout of Zoe that suits the volumetric light. The same depth layer is then used to apply depth of field, but the layer is useful in a number of ways, as you can also add additional fogging through it, given you need a bit more depth in your final image!