what to do with shademaps that come with sculptys

Does anybody know how to apply a shademap that comes with a sculpty to a texture like fabric,metal, or stone in GIMP? Thanks, Helena

Good to hear one is provided.

Simple version:
Create a new image at say,1024 and drag your shade map in (Dupe it first to keep an original in your working file) and resize to image-size. Unless you need sharp edged shadows you can blur it a bit maybe.
Then drag your fabric or whatever in so the shading layer is above the fabric. Resize, tile, or make it repeatable or whatever is needed.
Select the shade layer and go through the filters at the top there and see which works best. Maybe "Multiply" or "Burn" (adjust the sliders to see what looks better).
You could dupe the shadow layer and use a different filter maybe.

Copy the first test out, resize to 512, maybe sharpen a little, flatten and save.

The details all depend on the sculpt, the location, the use, the texture etc etc...
But that's the gist of it and experimentation.

If you use Emerald, you can import it in as a temporary image to test the look inside SL.