why texture: for preview purposes, and I was going to experiment with Maya's Transfer Maps utility to create the diffuse map as well as normals. But it sounds like this is premature...
Nice results, a few issues with the normal but is not important, i wanna see the diffuse more dark, and watch how the highlight (specular) goes around the bake.
Oh no! Gold is a color to avoid? haha...probably too late now. Thanks for the feedback. Ill add more color into the diffuse so that it's less monotonous.