UV Mapping woes

[Lucius Sejanus]

Does anyone have any tips for working with UV maps in 3DS Max 9 (or older)?

I\'ve modeled up a low-poly version of the Soyuz spacecraft, and am now trying to texture it. Problem is, the Soyuz has a roughly bell-shaped descent module, so every automatic tool gives me funny curved shapes that I am waaay too unartistic to be able deal with. I am also way too unartistic to be able to manually caress them into a simple rectangular shape that would just wrap around my model as if it was a cylinder. So is there maybe some magic button somewhere that unwraps a roughly cylindrical object into a simple flat map?

[Epsilon]

I don\'t know. I have the same problem with Blender though(I\'ve been making the exact same spacecraft for KSP ). I\'m considering asking one of the part developers.

[Killerhurtz]

Maya DOES have an automatic UV mapping function, but except if you learn to displace them yourself a bit the result might be sub-optimal.

[C7Studios]

Personally I find the key to uv mapping is breaking the part up. You can highlight specific faces and run a uv map command on them. For instance use a planar map with the bottom connector plate because its likely flat. You could then run a cylindrical or spherical map on the bell shaped faces. Just take the part plane by plane. It\'s rare running an automatic operation on all faces at once will produce a good result. I\'m spending some time learning advanced uv mapping in max. If I can manage to get a really good process down, ill write up a guide.