maya batch rendering

[deadplant155]

ive tried several times now to batch render a sequence of stills in maya, and i've had the same frustrating problem every time. the scene im trying is just a simple test of the built in ocean effect, with no other objects in the scene, from frame 0 to 60, so two seconds. it makes it up to a certain number of frames (usually in the teens, but sometimes as low as 2 or as high as 50) it stops counting the percentage of completion and starts not rendering the frames, just creating the file and skipping to the next one, and it just doesnt finish the rest of the animation. if i try it as a movie, i cant play it at all, if i do it as a sequence of stills, all the ones up to the problem frame are fine, but after that, they get huge, and they say theyre corrupted when i try to open it. also, when i playback using fcheck, it goes way faster than realtime, which is annoying, no matter how much i slow it down with the little speed percentage button. it also plays super fast in the viewer when i play an animation.

second question, can you make a texture show up in the viewport in realtime? it shows up in the render, just not in the viewer while im editing the objects...thanks much

-loren