Don't laugh too hard...
 

I have a REALLY STUPID QUESTION! you will laugh so hard.

but hopefully you will give me a hand as a final benevolent act before you die of laughing-initiated intestinal breach.
anyway, here the question is, in all its dumbness:

How do I render animations?

I have modelled in maya for years, but have never had to render more than test frames until now. my preveous rendering experience with rendering was in Animation: Master several years back, and all I had to do was set the frame range, padding etc to be rendered and hit "render". when I try to do the same thing in Maya, it still only renders the one frame I'm currently at. I have heard talk of "batch rendering" but when I try to do this, it asks me how many processors to use and then, when I click "begin batch render" it does: Nothing!
any help is appreciated, and please excuse my over(under?)whelming ignorance.

Check out our free Render Globals tutorial on how to do this.

Sounds like you need to check your Render Globals. There is an option there for using only 1 CPU. I suggest you take a look at your other options while you are in there. Most are pretty self-explanatory...any that aren't, F1 them.

Yea, change your start frame and end frame to the range you want, change your frames to whatever(i mostly use avi), and then look in your scripting window to watch it work.

Thanks all! I didn't know that window meant it was rendering.

>>>Render Globals

This is one of the most frequently asked questions at Simply Maya:

Q. How do I render a movie?

A. Here you go...Mike will show you how :)

This is a tutorial will have you making movies in no time!
<<<

I just saw this by the render globals movie. man do I feel dumb!
=P