I suggest getting Lithunwrap, but you should understand the thoery first, might help you understand how and why it works like it does.
The simplest way to imagine UV data is that each 3D vertice has a 2D UV coordinate. If you have a plain, it has 4 corners and is made from 2 polygons - each corner is a seperate vert, so 2 corners will adjust more than one polygon in the mesh. In standard UV mapping, the vertices in 3D would be pretty close to the layout on it's UV map, each vertice having a corner of the texture.
UV coordinates are represented on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale, so texture resolution means nothing, it'd be stretched out to a square. UV data can exceed the range to allow texture tiling, like if a plain had it's top left UV coordinate at -10.0,-10,0; you'd see a crazy repeating of the texture, and it'd be distorted.
Planar mapping is the most common mapping technique, basically it's like flattening the mesh on an axis and using the new 2D coordinates to make the UV map.
It takes a lot of practice and even pro UV mappers take hours to make their UV maps, but a good UV map can make an ok model look great so it's worth developing a skill in that department. Plus there's a lot of modellers who can't texture at all, it is really a seperate job from modelling - pro modellers tend not to do their own UV mapping or texturing. That's something you should take into consideration, always have a production line point of view. For instance:
* Model the mesh.
* Make a stand-in texture and apply it to the model.
* Export it and load it into your texturing software.
* UV map it and store the UV map wireframe preview as a bitmap.
* Load the texture into your art package and the UV map preview as seperate layers.
* Draw your texture (I suggest using several layers and the lighten/darken tools a great deal, the wireframe layer should be used as a guide only).
* Rig your mesh for animation and animate it.
* Load into DBPro to check transparent textures etc.
Works for me.
Van-B
Next time he runs past, GRAB HIM!
