Question are you using Dynamics in this simulation? If you are you should cache it before batch rendering. That could be your problem Dave No dynamics used. Everything is recorded to key frames, even the camera movement. No nurbs, no motion paths, textures are not baked, they are 1k textures. And I didn't have the asteroid paint effects in there when the render used to crash like crazy, so maybe that's not the problem. Now the MR renders fine a single frame, but if I want Maya to export all 300 frames to different JPEG files and name them itself, batch rendering crashes on 2nd frame and says that it's done. (I also get a brief crash report window for a few seconds before the rendering ends).