[Jeff Rogers]

No idea how this turned out, but for anyone stumbling upon this in the future: one thing that was not mentioned in this thread was layer styles. Layer styles have the same effect on 3D renders as, say, a 2D layer or an adjustment layer: layers above that layer are rendered on top of the layers below it, no matter their respective positions in 3D space. The effect is that layers further down in the stack seem to disappear as layers that may be further back in Z-space are being brought to the front as if they were a nested pre-comp laid on top. I’m betting that in this instance the psd layer had some sort of layer styles applied to it, likely imported with the layer from Photoshop. If you’re having this problem, check your layer styles.