Your scene file determines whether you render a single frame or an animation. You can render from a shell or a command line. Before rendering, you may want to close all applications, including Maya, to maximize the amount of memory available for rendering.
When you render from a command line, you can set flags that override some of the Render Settings, saving time during test renders.
For more information, see Render from the command line in the Rendering Utilities guide.
To get quick renderer-specific information
Render -r rendername -help
where rendername is the name of the renderer.
All flags have a short description. Each flag corresponds to the appropriate section of the Render Settings window. See the Render Settings documentation for more detailed information on each option.
To obtain a complete list of command line Render options, from a shell or command line
Render -help
To render a scene with a specific renderer from a shell or command line
Render -r <renderername> <options> scene
To render a scene with the renderer specified in the file from a shell or command line