Baking Textures - 3ds Max

I had never created anything in 3d for anything until recently, but have always wanted to do so.  My head is so full of ideas that I'm trying to learn and implement.  One of biggest challenges is mastering a good 3d program to do my work in.  I've chosen 3ds Max with a plug-in called Prim Composer that allows you to create and export objects for Second Life.  I've spent hours watching tutorials on both the program itself and the plug-in and getting a grasp on how to create my objects and export them, and I have already imported projects into Second Life that are currently selling on the Second Life Market Place and in my stores in-world.

The next step:  Creating textures for complex objects.  This is challenging because each object is basically a wire frame 3d image that has a texture wrapped around it.  The texture itself needs to be painted flat, then it wraps around and there is a seam or seams.  You need to paint the image to match up at the seams and to accurately represent what it is you are trying to make.  For instance, I have made a single prim stack of eight hay bales.  When I apply the hay texture, the seams don't match up and there are separate faces on each bale that go in different directions so it looks kind of like a patchwork of images.  My goal will be to make these patches all face the correct direction!  Here is a picture of what it looks like when the texture is not "baked" onto the actual sculpt and just applied to the prim in-world with no editing.

I hope to be able to update this page with a new image that has a baked texture on it. Wish me luck!

Update!  Redone hay bales: