I use, and love PSD Manager, but RebusFarm doesn’t support it. I remember years ago finding that out and it made rendering to RederFarm a no-go. I just tried RebusFarm again, but again, it isn’t supported. How else are people masking out all their layers? I know there are ID channels and stuff, but PSD Manager simply created a PSD with all your elements and layers masked, which was awesome. Anything else as easy and would be supported by most render farms?
Hi Bobby 
I’ve been an extensive PSDM user for years (as well as beta tester), and we’re facing the same problem as you … we use a french renderfarm (Ranch Computing), which used to be PSDM compatible until they switched their system to some proprietary multiband rendering, apparently for performances gains ! so now we’re stuck with a pretty nice credits amount, which we’ll use only for animations, and not for stills rendered with PSDM 
who said PITA ? 
Like you, if someone had some advice about that …
Regards.
I dont have PSD Manager (although I’m thinking of getting it)
I use multimatte for all my main textures/objects. I have 5 multimattes in my elements (3 x 5 = 15). This has been sufficient for most scenes, You can always add more
Hello Morne,
Yes, sure, one can use MutiMattes … but once you’ve tasted PSDM workflow (Scene Layers, REs, Object and Mat IDs …), other approaches seems like stone age
Thanks for starting this thread - I sent an email to Rebusfarm and Ranch Computing to see what can be done about it.
In any case it helps to send an email to whatever render service provider you would like to use and let them know that you want to use psd-manager. They can also reach out to me (mail (at) daniel-schmidt (dot) biz) if they need help implementing support. Feel free to pass on my details or just set me CC and I will get in touch.
Daniel
I asked and they said that they can’t, for technical reasons[quote=“vlado, post:12, topic:45998, username:vlado”]
Thanks for starting this thread - I sent an email to Rebusfarm to see what can be done about it.
In any case it helps to send an email to whatever render service provider you would like to use and let them know that you want to use psd-manager. They can also reach out to me (mail (at) daniel-schmidt (dot) biz) if they need help implementing support. Feel free to pass on my details or just set me CC and I will get in touch.
Daniel
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Which I as the psd-manager developer may be able to solve, we will see.
Daniel
ProEXR (Index of /ProEXR) is pretty awesome for Photoshop, not as automated as PSD Manager (well not at all), but if you write a script it’s easy enough to select a bunch of objects in your scene and assign them V-Ray matte id which will get picked up in the exr files. You can then use matt id alpha channels as a selection mask and it is good to go.
Hi Daniel !!
Long time since we last heard from you ! I hope everything’s ok with PSDM dev … a few improvements we’re waiting for the next version ! btw, any ETA, please
About PSDM support with various renderfarms, it’s becoming pretty old now … I guess we exchanged on that nearly one year ago, maybe even more. With Ranch Computing, I had the feeling it was sort of a deaf dialog, because the RC guys kept on telling me they did support PSDM, because scenes using it could be rendered without errors … but no correct output was generated ! I mean … are they kidding ? I must admitt I just gave up with them, although we still have a nice amount of credits for Ranch Computing, but we keep them for animations (that we do very very rarely).
Anyway, thanks for any help you could provide
Cheers.
No reply from Ranch Computing so far but I had a good conversation with Rebusfarm (they are located in Germany too).
Rebusfarm currently doesn’t support any kind of multi-layer output format on any platform in general (speaking only of still image rendering, not animations here). So not PSD specific or even psd-manager specific at all and the same for EXR.
The main problem is the stitching of the individual image snippets of the multi-layer formats which no tools exist for. A similar problem to Backburners Split-Scanline rendering that can not stitch all formats back together.
I will attempt to build a tool that will be able to join the individual PSD snippets into a single PSD. Not a simple task (each PSD snippet may have a different layers and folders structure), so please be patient.
Best Regards,
Daniel Schmidt
Great! That would be awesome. The lack of PSD Manager support was my reason for not using a render farm service, so it would be a win/win/win for everyone if you can get it to work.
Hi Daniel
Good news you’re thinking about doing something for that ! no hurry though, we’ve dealt with that for sometime now, so a few months more or less …
Thanks a lot !
A workaround is rendering out something locally, with a material override and reflections off. Now, you can just use that PSD for the layer masks.
Hi Bobby,
Sure, it’s a workaround. But when you’re used to work with PSDM Render Cut-Out mode, it’s hard to get back using masks only … and I don’t even mention REs !
I don’t know what Cut-out mode is or REs. I just use the masked layers in PS[quote=“Ivaylo Katev, post:4, topic:46026, username:Ivaylo_Katev”]
Hi Bobby,
Sure, it’s a workaround. But when you’re used to work with PSDM Render Cut-Out mode, it’s hard to get back using masks only … and I don’t even mention REs !
[/quote]
Cut-Out mode is one of the various output modes PSDM offers for Scene Layers / ObjectIDs / MatIDs. If you haven’t yet, try it
By “REs” I meant Render Elements output (and the options that come with it) 
I just render my stills with RE and then render out individual mattes with the Rendermask script. Since the mattes only take a minute or two tops you can do as many of these as you need.
Okay, I watched the PSD videos. I get it, but I like all my layers to be automatically masked. I alse use the Render Elemetns[quote=“andybot_cg, username:andybot_cg”]
Cut-Out mode is one of the various output modes PSDM offers for Scene Layers / ObjectIDs / MatIDs. If you haven’t yet, try it
By “REs” I meant Render Elements output (and the options that come with it)
[/quote]
I have also been in contact with the CTO of Ranch Computing in the mean time. Main pain points mentioned by them are easier deployment of the plugin to the server farm and as expected assembling the PSD from the rendered strips. The first one is mostly resolved already (as all really needed to install psd-manager is to copy the plugin - nothing else) and the second will take a while.
In general I feel some expected resistance by render farm providers to install smaller plugins, as each one needs to be maintained by them and will only be used by a portion of their clients. And in the case of psd-manager don’t immediately understand that this is not just another file format plugin that can be replaced with some PNGs.
Daniel
Hello Dan
Good news you’re in touch with several render farms guys ! let’s hope we’ll get some solid solution one day
About PSDM deployment, I guess we can hardly find a plugin easier to install … so that’s definitely not the problem indeed.
If need anything to continue convincing them, let us know.
Thanks again,
Cheers.