Help with Normal mapping and yes looked at tut titled normal mapping

Support Materials and Textures
1

Right I have been following all the tutorials on normal map modelling etc done by a member in the tutorial section, now the issue is baking.

Firstly what is the max number of polys blender can handle I assumed with a sculpt feature it would handle large polygon numbers.

Now what I do is I go to low res version of which is a thousand. Then I unwrap that right? does that mean that I just press U then unwrap or the other options that appear like smart unwrap, LCM unwrap or something, cylinder, sphere, and cube unwrap now if you do these unwrap options does that mean the normal map wont work unless you unwrap then manually sort it out?

Then I have the high res version on 1 layer and the low res on another layer, in the same place (is there a way to 100 % be sure its in the exact spot?) I then save the image and save the tga in the UV option in the editor followed by script and save uv file. Then you select the high detailed model and then the low res model and activate bake? But it doesnt do it or crashes, and can I even get it back into max/maya in first place?

Also how can I get this and the normal map into 3ds max 9 or Maya 2008?

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From what i understand your tangent normal mapping. For the unwrapping the best option would be smart projection unwrap. If its a head model then you can use seams. everything seems right.

unwrap low poly model, Create new image, Select high poly model then low poly model,go back to edit mode so you can see it baking. make sure you have ‘selected to active’ option on in the baking options and make sure you select tangent in the normal mapping options. Then bake. try doing it with something very simple first like a 2 planes. it helped me figure out how it worked. Hope this helps.