Hi,

I experienced with this during the afternoon...

- Created a repetitive pattern in MoI
- Saved as Illustrator file (right view selected)
- Import the AI file into Photoshop.
- Used the paint bucket tool to fill the "holes" with black and added some gaussian blur
- Created a normal map using the NVidia plugins (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html)

The final image is an example of the normal map applied to a single polygon in Modo...

Possibilities for such repetitive patterns are endless...