OOoooooohhh.
I almost missed it, but in CVS we now have render baking:
I loved Braybaker before, but b/c it was in python there was a severe speed penalty, this is super charged turbo fast in comparison. (sorry, braybaker author, we love you)
Here’s Ton explanation:
http://www.blender.org/cms/Render_Baking.827.0.html
wzzl
Umm, yeah, I think you did miss it : 
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=82705
Now could you explain to we of the baker-deprived knowledge, just what it’s used for … and an example of how to use it? 
Mike
Do you want a tutorial here or in the wiki?
As it’s in cvs, i’d like to wait until 2.43.
Anywho, this functionality has many uses:
well-lit VR models, f.i. Google-Earth,x3d or blenderpublisher
AO map as a stencilmap for dirt etc
Speed up animation renders by baking light, AO and shadow
more
…Another use is for game creation, you can render everything offline, and then map it as textures onto the mesh for realtime display. Sorta like light maps.
One question before I give it a spin: do you have to manually assign a UV layout? Or does blender automatically upwraps the model into an ‘ideal’ UV layout?
yes you have to manually asssign UVs yourself and add a blank image (can be done within blender) before you can bake
The basics of ‘Speed up animation renders by baking light, AO and shadow’ would be appreciated.
thanks
A tutorial would be great, but even a condensed 10-20 line set of instructions would be ok just to start with.
I thought that it might be used for the E.D. scene files, for example, which use a lot of textures on the characters. I loaded up one of the scenes, selected all of Proogs mesh parts and selected “full render” bake.
After doing that, I did another render, thinking that the “baked” textures were “cached” or something, but the render didn’t seem to be progressing any faster than normal. So I guess I missed a step … or two.
Mike
i like the normals baking you can use it as a normal map for a lowpoly or non subsurfed model.