Map Baking Techniques in Maya LT
BUILD EFFICIENT ASSETS, turning high res models to low res

About this course
When working on 3D projects, games more specifically, using efficient assets is very important. There are limitations that make using very dense, highly detailed models impractical. They can be difficult to maneuver around a scene and the topology may not be ideal for deformation.

For this reason, we can transfer high resolution detail and color information from a high resolution model to a low resolution target and Maya LT provides tools for doing just that.

In this tutorial we'll take a brief look at texture baking in Maya LT. We'll look at the Turtle Texture Baking interface and some of the basic settings to look for. We'll then transfer a color texture from one model to another. We'll also look at transferring detail via normal maps, baking ambient occlusion maps, and learn to bake lighting into a texture.
 
http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1589-Map-Baking-Techniques-in-Maya-LT