texture baking with maya and turtle i need help

hi,
i am having a hard time trying to figure out how to get maya to texture bake my textures so that they turn out well, using the program turtle to bake them. i am very confused and can realy use some tips about how you bake with turtle ( mental ray is nice, but does not give a nice job like turtle has) i am new to them and could really use any head start you can give. thank you very much for any help and have a nice day

Your request is pretty vague. If you want to know something specific, you'll need to ask specific questions.

If you're brand new to Maya, go through all the tutorials in the Help file before you do anything else. That is mandatory. There's no better way to learn Maya. Put all thoughts of making things for SL out of your mind for now. Learn the basics of Maya itself first.

If you're new to Turtle, there are some great tutorials on Illuminate Labs' website. Also, the Turtle instruction manual is quite thorough (although a bit dry). I'd suggest you read it through, if you haven't already. It explains what does what very well.

Beyond that, it all comes down to practice, practice, practice. There are people here who can give you pointers and tips along the way, of course, but it's pretty hard to do that without hearing specifics from you first. "Tell me how to make it come out well" just isn't a reasonable queston, sorry. There are just too many variables. There's no "make it turn out well" button, as I'm sure you know.

In order to learn to bake well, you first need to know what you're doing with modeling, texturing, networking shaders, lighting, and rendering, just to get started. We simply can't explain all that here, and even if by some miracle we could, it wouldn't do you any good anyway. You'll find that learning Maya is kind of like learning to drive a car. It's 10% knowledge, and 90% experience.

Once you've got some experience under your belt, I'm sure you'll have questions that are answerable. For now, the Help tutorials are your best friends.

i apologise for being so vague, i am new to maya rendering and baking, and really just am getting the hang of maya in modeling very simple but pretty models.

when it comes to rendering with turtle it really is difficult because i do not know what most of it does, and i guess i am a little discouraged if i dont know what i sould pay alot of attention to first (that is how i spent 6 years trying to figure out photoshop. even though i knew other painting programs well i felt like there are all of these buttons and it's just too many things to try and understand at once. i was really lucky to take a course over my sister's shoulder (thanks sis!) which made things much less scary for me)

alot of the time 3d programs and other high tech stuff like that makes someone feel like it is just too complicated. the tutorials that explain alot of the time are so into how much they know about it and use complicated words , and expect you to know alot about it too and what there words mean. i always wonder if that is done because maybe they forgot just how big and scary something you have never tryed before can be. and when it is hidden in different words which you have never heard before and not just some simple english, maybe a little slowness to make you more comfortable, you do feel like they dont really want you to know, and you just give up.

if your my sister, you will ask and ask and find ways around this, like looking for video tutorials and things which just show you (those are good). or, you just step into a forum and ask one big question and see if anyone can give you any direction because it's better then not understanding for another long bit of time. i thank you for teling me about those key things. modeling, texturing, networking shaders, lighting, and rendering- i can for sure get started on looking through them. now i have a little path i can walk on to get to my goal, and it's thanks to my sister who told me to just try asking, and with thanks to you for taking your time to answer
thank you so much, and i wish you well!