hi, actually I've posted this question in the basic questions forum before, buuut it's not that basic.
Basically what I want to do is render images with depth channel from Maya for use in aftereffects7.0. Well, I've ticked the appropriate box in render globals. But whenever I put my footage into AEF it doesn't work -nothing happens. I've tried .png; .jpg; .iff (whose z channel is aparently not recognized by AEF, as I found out later) .psd; .rla; and 16bit tiff. Upon taking any of these files into Photosop and checking the channels tab the only thing they have is the normal RGBA.... soo I don't know were the mistake is. I've tried maya help, google - tutorials, creative cow etc and searched this forum.
I know what a lot of people will say, get a depth shader and do it as a separate pass, -you'll have more control. I've done that and it kinda works, the thing is I'm fairly beginner with all this stuff and I don't need a lot of control which confuses me even more.
So, after all this text my simple question is: How do you add the Z-channel to your frames by simply checking the Z box in render globals, and then use it in AEF?

thanks a lot guys