The work flow for this is really simple.

The problem comes when its time to assign the baked normal map to the low res object.

Unlike previous versions where you can directly choose the normal map, you can't do it in 2012. At least not in an obvious way.. Instead you can only choose Normal bump. But you can't choose the normal map. If that makes any sense. It puts you in a loop of creating new normal bump instances.

So if anyone knows how to assign normal maps in the material editor for this version, I would appreciate it. It's effectively stopped me from modeling as there isn't any other efficient way to import high poly models into skyrim while keeping poly count down to a minimum. I finished a shield(low res 228 polys and high res 11,500 polys).

I'm beginning to believe this is the worst 3DS version ever.