I just meant that you take a UVed lowpoly model and a hipoly model and it renders the hipoly model to the lowpoly one so you get a diffuse map that fakes the detail of the hipoly model (replacement for normalmapping for engines that don't take dot3). Normalmappers can create a normalmap or an unlit diffuse map but I…
That's possible with Maya and mental ray as I described above only instead of baking to verts bake to texture. I did this 2 days ago. Took a high res model, baked out diffuse maps with radiosity lighting and subtle shaders, applied those to a low res in game model. Ive yet to decide wether I prefer the results over hand…