Thru the menu:

Window > Rendering Editors > Render View

In that new window:

Options > Render Globals
   Change filename
   Change image format to tif
   Change resolution to 640x480
 Close window

Render an image by:
Render > Render > persp  (or whatever view you want)

The file will be placed in the project's "images" folder. 

You can't use Polygonal Texturing on NURBS object:    
   1) Use Modify > Convert > NURBS to Polygon
   or
   2) ... well... it seems that planar mapping works & I found a link below.

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Once you have UVs assigned  and you have applied a texture
you can Switch to component type (F8) and then click on the round dot (uv Param points). You can  then drag and select them.  Next try :
   Window > UV Texture Editor

In that window you can scale, rotate your UVs to change the texture parameterization.

Read up on UV Texture Editor in the Maya documentation

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Key Bindings:
4 = wireframe
5 = smooth shaded (with default lighting)
6 = smooth shaded with hardware texture mapping (with default lighting)
7 = smooth shaded with textures and lights you have provided

F8 : swtich between component type vs object type
F9 : vertices
F10 : edges
F11 : faces

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In the Maya documentation:
    (accessible as  http://armitage.at.northwestern.edu:4444/Maya5.0/en_US/index.html )
   Shading > Textures in Maya
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