ill be making a tut shortly on normal mapping with alias maya/xsi

but what you said seems accurate.
in maya, u dont have to UV the high rez mesh, only low rez need to be UV'ed.
export your normal map into photoshop use it as a ref over the low rez UV's then paint over it. also surface sample can copy textures from a high rez, then u can tweak the color map it created in photoshop or bodypaint.

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as for vertex lighting, what u said
here was also right. its just baking lighting into the object.
but most engines now do realtime lighting.


try to make only one thread when possible.