Freeware for baking normal map lighting

CheeseOnToast

Hi all...the struggle to get a decent workflow for normal mapping continues =D Does anyone know of any normal map viewer that's capable of baking lighting to a texture as reference for a diffuse map? The maya method is so finicky, and needs a pretty complex shader setup to do it even half decently. Freeware would be best, obviously.

Eric Chadwick

Melody does an ambient occlusion pass I think. Dunno.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/melody_home.html

What modeling software are you using?

KDR_11k

The easiest way is just to place a plane with an object/worldspace version of the normalmap in front of your camera so it covers the view completely (exact settings depend on your app), set up your lighting and render.