sounds like max speak, im using maya atm... would the history of a transform components function work similarly? that aside i'd have to see if you can install the sbm exporter on maya LT... :/....aaannnd it looks like this may not be possible. so ill have to stick with fbx for now...
I forgot to mention, I always use FBX, that might have helped. I like to try to remove as many variables as possible when trouble shooting, so I often just use one smoothing group and a simple UV map when trying to figure out issues like this.
Yeah actually, it looks a lot like this, moreso than the cage thing, because generally with intersections from a poorly set up cage you won't have a fine noise pattern like this, more uniform chunks will be missing usually. I've had similar looking results with poorly decimated meshes though.
btw, this is probably just camera clipping or some aliasing but to me it looks like its due to the hard edges. you getting incorrect shading on the out edges on both of the hard edge models areas in red should be like areas in green i only bring it up since you care about normal maps so much :D