Something I’ve found that not many game artists are familiar with is the Render Layers found in Maya since version 7.
They can be extremely handy if you want to render your scene in passes, but they can also be very helpful when baking geometry to textures.
Better skin with the mia_material
By combining the blurry reflections and built-in ambient occlusion of the mia_material with the layered subsurface scattering of the misss_fast_skin shader you can get great looking skin while maintaining artistic control.