Compositing layers for photoshop

[samuel.nickson]

I have some 2D characters that I've drawn in photoshop and I have a scene in maya that's ready to be rendered. I have my background and all my objects. However I want to know if it's possible to render the background and the objects separately. Then be able to quickly apply the background to background in photoshop with the characters behind the foreground rendered objects? 

Thanks for reading 

[Christoph_Schaedl · Accepted solution]

The esiest way would be to render twice just hiding the objects and use a matte material to get the shadows.

https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Creating+the+Shadow+Matte

If you like to dig deeper take a took at render setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjbYQF60N2w

and the EXR plugin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI3IydbTFsE

https://www.exr-io.com/

[samuel.nickson]

Thank you for replying.

So If I have these images rendered, can I put them straight into photoshop. I'm assuming the beauty pass of the "cut out" layer if the foreground will make everything else transparent. Making it super easy to just make an image. Or do I need to composite the images in a separate software first???

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Use the plugin above to load the EXR files.

If you render to jpg or any other file format just open them in PS.