Path to Render

On Windows, the path to the Render command is set for you during installation (on Windows, by adding to the system PATH environment variable). On Mac OS X and Linux, you must either include the path as part of the command, or set your system path to include the path to Render. See your platform documentation for how to accomplish this.

On Mac OS X, the Render command is located at:

/Applications/Autodesk/maya2009/Maya.app/Contents/bin/

On Linux, the Render command is located at:

/usr/autodesk/maya2009/bin

Maya Terminal window provided with Maya (Mac OS X)

You can render from the command line via the Maya Terminal window, which has all the proper path information to run Maya command-line applications. For more information, see Maya Terminal window provided with Maya.

To render from the command line

1. Do one of the following:

   At the command prompt, shell, or Terminal window, type:

   Render -r <renderer name> <options> <filename>

   where <renderer name> is the name of the renderer:

   • mr = mental images^®mental ray^®
   • mi = exporting .mi files using the command line
   • sw = software renderer
   • hw = hardware renderer
   • vr = vector renderer

   and where <filename> is (generally) a Maya ASCII or Maya Binary file, and <options> is one or more of the options or flags.

   This renders the image or animation using the renderer you specify in the command line.

2. At the command prompt, type:

   Render <options> <filename>

   <filename> is (generally) a Maya ASCII or Maya Binary file, and <options> is one or more of the options or flags.

   This renders the image or animation using the renderer defined in the file.

For descriptions of the common command line renderer flags, see Common flags for the command line renderer.

For descriptions of the renderer-specific command line renderer flags, see Renderer-specific flags for the command line renderer.