Uv mapping

Hi, as a beginning blender user I would like to ask if there is any way to create an object in blender, for example a chair, texture it and then rendering it to create shadows etc with the purpose of having those exact shadows and textured saved to a texture I can apply to the mesh when imported in Second Life giving it the same shadows and highlights as it has on the rendered picture ?

I hope somebody has some useful input on this one. If my explanation above is not good enough please let me know and I will elaborate.

Render Baking http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Bake

Thank you… I will try to see if that works for me.

/Sara

Is there a way that this can be done in cycles too?