None that I know of, its not to hard all you do is make a sphere live then paint CV curve on it following your reference (dont try and do in one go) then when you have the pattern sorted out use a nurb circle to extrude along the curves (I then convert to polys after I have it all sorted out). this took me about 10 min to sort out...............dave

Edit:sorry did not read the end of your post,why a occlusion map two reason for me 1 it will show up in photoshop were the raised pattern will be on the sphere and also you can use it as a dirt map