how to bake
 

I'm in the middle of a project right now and one of the things I need to do next week is bake a texture onto a model. I've never done this before.

What I want to do is this:
I'm modeling a real person's head using reference planes with front and side view pictures as reference. After I finish the modeling and setting up the UVs, I want to project the front view picture of the person onto the model then bake it so that I will have a color map. I then want to take the head model with the color map into Zbrush to adjust the color map as needed.

So, I know I'm being lazy but, can someone tell me how to bake a projection onto a model? I don't want to bake any lighting into the texture. Just the texture itself.

Thanks in advance.

Re: how to bake
 

you can bake a texture map onto another by using the transferSurfaceInfo tool in maya. but what you are trying to do will definately not work or at leaast give desired results.
so, in this case both objects need to be UV'ed properly and non-overlaping.

in maya 7.0 the surafce info tool has been moved under "modify>surface sampler
then select the plane witht the texture you want to bake, then in the window option box for the tool, in the source section click add selected,
then select head and add it to the target.

then set output to texture then bake.

Thanks Vlad!

No, I know that I can't just transfer the surface info from the plane to the model. I'm going to project the image onto the model through the camera. That way it will be lined up and the texture data will actually be on the model. Now, how do I bake the info so I no longer have to project it?

Remember my project that showed the T-rex coming out of my chest? I projected the background video onto a chest model through the camera then I used that chest model as a reference object for the rendered chest(the chest that I animated opening up). ... I figure that if I can project the data onto the model then there must be a way to assign it to the model in the form of a color map that can be edited in another paint program.

if you want to bake with maya software render select the mesh then select the shader of the mesh with the projection on it,

in the hypershade go to edit>convert file to texture

if you want to do it with MR, in the rendering menu set, under lighting/shading tab > batch bake (MR) option box.

Thank you, Vlad. I appreciate your help with this and I will try out your solution this weekend.