Note: A new render setup system is available in
Maya 2016 Extension 2 that provides a modern approach to creating render layers, collections and overrides. This new approach simplifies the management of complex scenes for rendering and is now the recommended workflow. See
Render setup in Maya for more information.
To render various attributes separately, for example, color, shadow, specular shading, and so forth, you may want to use render passes. If you are using the Maya software renderer, see
Work with render passes for more information.