I discovered about halfway through that given the time and budget constraints it was going to be impossible to composite pre-rendered passes in a traditional pipeline, so I created my own hybrid Cinema 4D/After Effects pipeline using Video Copilot’s Element 3D to capitalize on almost real-time GPU renders within After Effects while still taking advantage of shadows and reflections while animating within Cinema 4D. This was quite a challenging project to accomplish as a solo artist on a single 2008 Mac Pro, but it has led to my attention to detail and ability to improvise, many years later!