Batch rendering animations to sprites from cardinal directions

[detrum]

I'm working on a sprite-based project and have a few hundred Maya files, each containing a short character animation.

What I need is an easy way to render each file from all eight cardinal directions (North, Northeast, East, and so forth) to a PNG sequence. I also need to keep the lighting consistent between all renders (i.e. rotate the model, and not reposition the camera). Ideally, I'd use the exact same scene setup (or mel script?) for every file, for the sake of consistency.

Rather than go through hundreds of files and manually rotate the model eight times and re-render for every angle, there's got to be something more elegant! If there is an off-the-shelf solution (or mel script?) free or paid, I would love to hear about it. Even something that sets up the scene with eight cameras, and then I can batch or manually render to PNG sequence (or sprite sheet?) from each of the eight cameras... that would be fantastic.

Thanks in advance!