ok, to the question in a sec.. first. as my insparation that runs around the house reminded me. I do need more than 2048, the caricter is molstly on poly shell. and I have a real need to render out to 2600 X 3800.

ok the PROBLEM.. I falowed Kbrowns tutorail on how to use more than one UV set. I'm using this to get over the 2048 texture map problem. and it's all going fine. I see the textures just ware they are supost be in Maya. but when I render I only see the first texture aplied.

I'm using a layered shader with the texture maps linked to each UV set. blend modes set to none.