Don't get lost in what you think may or may not work, as you are obviously not at that point yet. Start by triangulating manually in Maya before export (as in : making sure that your object is fully tris, in the scene) and run your test bakes that way. Then, once that works, you'll be able to worry about the finer points…
Hey! Been eyeballing this concept by Lera Pi (@ArtLerapi) and finally was able to create this bit of fanservice to their wonderful piece. After speaking with Lera over twitter, it turns out this piece was attempted once before but fell short of Lera's expectations. I can only hope I gave her the redemption arc she…