render renderlayers into one multichannel exr or PSD file

[thorstenswiss]

Hi There

We try to render renderlayers (not passes) from maya into one multichannel exr file this seems not to be possible?
Is there any way to render all Renderlayers into one layered file?

Thank you
Best regards

[SonyBoy]

I don't think there is any way to do this -- render layers intrinsically will output their own frame sequences. Why do you want to do this?

[thorstenswiss]

Hi
Simple, we process from an Animation always a number of stills (approx 80) in Hirez for print. in order to make simple Photoshop actions and apply it to the images a layered file is 100% a time saver.
We used to work with Mental Ray which had the output "Layered PSD" since ages. In My opinion it makes perfect sence to output the layer structure as you have it in Maya in a file,

[SonyBoy]

I've done quite a bit of high rez print work, and never work with multichannel EXRs when I'm doing that as it requires a plugin and is generally just more trouble than it's worth. Do you know about the "Load Files Into Stack" feature of Photoshop, under the File > Scripts menu? If you output all of your render passes as separate files into a single folder, creating a layered PSD out of them is very easy.

[thorstenswiss]

Hi

thank you, i am aware of load in stack... and Bridge...and other workarounds.
We made already some js scripts to adjust to the lack of layered files.
If you have a layered file with a structured layer order you can easily apply some actions to 100s of images to make adjustments and more.
Now we first have to collect all the separate files together to make layers so it is 100% more work.
as mentioned before, mental ray was able to output layered psd... im sure Vray could do the same.
but if not we have to tweak our js solution to a fixed tool...