Depends on what your render and scene settings are. For instance if you use a lot of lights with ray traced shadows or Final gather set to 0.0 0.0 1000, it can stall maya and not do anything at all. it is very important to keep your scene neat and orderly and set your rendering globals to exacts instead of letting maya determine the best settings.
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And after calming me down with some orange slices and some fetal spooning,
E.T. revealed to me his singular purpose.
--TOOL, 10,000 Days---
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