My Scene contains a VDB volume, a sunlight and a ground.
To have more control over the shadows casted by the volume on the ground, i wanted to render the shadow in a seperate pass. The plan was to render the volume and then have a multilayer file with the cloud as a single layer and the shadow as a single layer. Something like this, just splittet automaticly:
To get the result shown above, i have to apply a matte material to the ground, disable render layer in the render passes and check alpha. It is not a big deal in this scenario because i can simple mask the shadow in AE to manipulate it seperatly, but in cases where the volume would intersect tha shadow catching geometry it would much harder work.
Another question would be: is it possible to recreate the beauty pass of a volume by using seperate layers? I guess so but couldn't mangae to get the right result in After Effects. Which layers do i need and how do i have to order/compose them in AE?