Looking for a good tutorial or book for 3D composite

Question

Hi, I do editing for 3D animation at work (simple kind) and working along with 2 other 3D modelers.
We recently came down to the conclusion that we need to composite to be able to render our animation.
However, none of us really know how to do 3D composite, including myself.
(I mean we know the simple composite using alpha channels and such... but not to the point to using z-depth or shadow maps... etc..).
I was looking around online and book store to find out if there is any good resources for us to learn. I do not have much luck of it, unfortunately.
I'd like to have our 3D modlers to know how to split to all different layers for a clean composite purpose.... (like for me to use in Shake ). From what I found out, higher end composite, you can split most of the gemoetries its own object IDs, and shadow map/layers, lighting layers... (even they render separetely, it do cast shadow as other objects surrounds it, or refection..) and then composite in one scene.
I believe we create pretty good animation when we rendered them all together in one scene, and now we are up to the point that there are too many geometeries and render farm computers can't handle to render (and they are not lower end compters but they crash when we try to render with not enough memories).
I'm not really looking for having real footage as background and 3D infront .. that kind of composite...
If there is anyone can direct me to a right book? or online website to learn more of this stuff for all of us, I'll be really appriciate it.
Thank you for your time...

Answer 1

These might get you started as well:
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/3d_and__animation/boulderdash
http://www.3drender.com/light/compositing/index.html
http://www.3drender.com/jbirn/ea/Ant.html
http://www.ethereal3d.com/Tutorials/Compositing/Compositing.html