So I am getting ready to render some render layers and have been looking around for a way to render all the layers at once so to say. I am going out of town for the weekend and was hoping to set a batch render for all of my layers..thinking when I get back they might be done.

Is this possible or would I have to open Maya enough times to render each layer separately?

the batch render already renders all the layers and puts them in the file directory you specify.

if you're wanting to render different projects then you should look at command line rendering...

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I can only get it to render 1 layer at a time, I tried using the command prompt to initiate my renders and I could not get that working either. I will look around and see what I can find, thanks for the reply.

Opening up multiple instances of Maya and having them all render at the same time sounds like a colossal resource drain that would probably slow things down to a crawl, don't be surprised if your render times go through the roof. I say go ahead and setup Backburner, that way you can send your jobs to batch with a couple clicks.

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- Genny
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Apparently I was blind when I was trying to do this, or its different in 2011 not sure. Either way I found the option for Render All Layers and am trying that now.

I will have to check out backburner I had no idea what it was for. Is it pretty self explanitory or should I go find some tutorials?

Its easy once you get passed the setup. There was something broken with the 2011, the 2010 works fine though. It's just a matter having consistent ports and ip address settings.

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- Genny
__________________
::|| My CG Blog ||::
::|| My Maya FAQ ||::

Rendering multiple layers works fine for me in 2011, but it used to only render the layers one per session in 2009. So it could be a version issue you were having.

That does sound odd that you can't batch render more than one layer at a time. I'm using 2009 and I don't have any trouble rendering out multiple layers.

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