Getting a render in Maya is quite straightforward. I'll give you the steps to do it with default lighting:
(1) Frame your model nicely in your viewport.
(2) Switch to the Rendering menu set by pressing F5
(3) Select the following menu path: Render->Render Current Frame...
A window (Render View) will pop-up and, shortly afterwards, your image will be rendered.
You can then save your image directly from the Render View by clicking File -> Save Image...
Edit: I strongly recommend doing a search in the Maya documentation for "Render View", this will give you all the useful features of this window.
Once you have the hang of this basic rendering, I suggest downloading Mike McKinley's 3 Point Lighting tutorial which will teach you a simple lighting scheme to make your renders much nicer.
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That'll do donkey... that'll do...
Last edited by rich; 09-03-2004 at 01:39 PM.