I am new to compositing and find the whole thing thoroughly confusing.
I wanted to create the animation of a planetary gear mechanism and make the outer rings semi-transparent so that the inner workings would be better visible. As you can see from the following image I have been partially successful:
I placed the inner gears on physical layer 1 and the outer rings on physical later 2, then created two render layers: RenderLayer1 incorporates physical layer 1 and RenderLayer2 physical layer 2. The image above was rendered while both layer 1 and layer 2 were highlighted. The compositing layout is as follows:
Frankly I don't fully understand this layout myself, it was created through trial and error. As you can see, the inner and outer wheels are rendered as a single scene: they cast shadows on each other. This is apparently because I have highlighted both layers. I would prefer, however, that each layer be rendered independently and and then combined but in such a way that the Z-index is taken into account, just like it is now.
Any hints how to do it?
Thanks in advance.
-- Peter