I want to be able to use Global Illumination lighting in a scene where I want to animate the camera. I like to have at least one light source in my GI renders to get shadows casting from a key light. I usually set the "key light" with an Intensity of "0.5" to make sure shadows are cast from the key lgiht. In Alias' Maya 5 Rendering book they make it sound rather easy to bake textures for mental ray.

I want to bake some of the textures for later scenes where I plan on having a hovering bot pass through the corridor. By baking some of the textures I should be able to speed up rendering by just having a light active for the bot.

However, the Alias book doesn't go into detail as far as whether or not you can delete the light or if the shaders themselves have to be specially treated.

Does anyone have experience with baking textures for mental ray renders?

Thanks