World of Warcraft Machinima Tool

More info about useage of depth maps see Here

You can use WoW Machinima Tool to create a depth pass in some circumstances. I did cover where it could be problematic in the link above, but here ill just show you how you create one in the areas where its possible.

First off all we need a diffuse pass. When taking static pictures i recommend that you tweak settings such as view distance and fog to take better pictures with more content.  In this example i have extended the view range and completely removed the fog to avoid having thoes ugly shaded trees in the background. I have also set the time to around 09:00 to give some good back lighting.

Diffuse pass

To create a simulated depth pass we simply just tweak the fog and light settings.

Set the Fog Color, All Sky and Cloud -Colors to pure white.

Now set the Sun + Halo Color, and the Dissuse and Ambient -Light Colors to pure black.

In this case we have some water and the water does have highlight that shines through, so i just turn off the Render Water even tho this does produce a not accurate depth pass it will look better than having small ripples in the pass.

Depth Pass

Now we need to set the Fog Nearclip to 0.0 so that the depth pass will start at the camera position.

And you can then tweak the Fog Farclip to match the depth range you want.

Example of Long Depth Range

Example of Short Depth Range

Now you can go into your Photo Editing application and make some cool effects with things like Depth of Field, fog, heat haze or whatnot.

Here is a little example of what you can do with a diffuse and depth pass:

Example of final result