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My procedure:

-Click on the model to grab some faces, such as all tire faces.
-Go into the UV edit window and drag the pieces into an empty area.
-Click on one piece's edge, select "stitch selected"
-Repeat until all related pieces are connected
-Drag all the similar pieces on top of eachother and align by sight (usually they are vary by a little bit for no reason at all, why can't max keep faces their original size?)
-Move on.

I've spend over 5 hours on this so far and I am not even half way done. What am I missing here?

You just need more experience and practice, thats all.

Apply unwrapp UVW modifier, select faces you want to unwrapp use planar/ cylindrical/ spherical mapping function, go to edit and move the faces from the main frame to a clear space. Repeat until you get a puzzle of faces and after that you can tag it together to the main frame. Dont forget to scale it to make it symmetrical, there are tons of good tutorials on the net. Dont waste your time with the try and fail method.

There are not many good tutorials. Most of them do simple boxes, which of course work out fine. Trying to lay out the complex shapes in a front grill on the other hand are not as easy. Using "planar" or another of the auto methods squashes some planes very badly. The only thing that does work at times is "unwrap UVs" and then it usually unwraps in a logically poor way.

Is there a way to lock parts into keeping their original shape or reforceing them into it?

Do misshaped parts really cause many problems?

What do you mean with "scale to make symetrical"? When scaling to fit in the sheet keep the x-y ratio equal?

UV mapping is boring !!!!!!!!

i wish that a program autoUVmapping exist , so i only need to click a botton and everything is UVmaped

Agreed.

All the program would have to do is keep the shape, match up shared edges and when in doubt match the longest shared edge while ensuring overlap is kept to a minimal.

Instead the program goes out of its way to squash and stretch parts.

I use the subfunctions (planar, cylindrical and spherical) for elements as tires, lights, tubes, flat sides... otherwise its sometimes just face by face work.
Try using other unwrapp plugins for 3ds as DEEP UV (I dont know it but I have read something about it).

The more you do it, the faster you get at it. It's a skill alot of modellers lack. I find it easier to think of everything in Planar. Think of it as drawing a Cube on the Outside of your Model. Then selecting each face that would most closely relate to a certain side of the cube. After they are selected you apply a Planar Map and it flattens out that side. If its a symetrical model then its alot easier, you just repeat the same step for the opposite side and move that map on to the same space as the other side.

Everyone has their own style though.

Ofcourse I also like to work in Maya... so waht do I know

You have probably seen that I have made a lot of models, right?
Have you ever seen any of my models with skins on them? no
Its mainly because its such slave work and you dont see any progress while doing it (apart from a chess board "yay" - sarcasm) that make it so god damn boring.
I was UV'ing the Negev (~3500 tris) - thats a lot of faces. And after 1,5 day of unwrapping I found out fist have done it. what a waste

I am in the progress of unwrapping a lot of my other models, including the MP5A4 for hamas, but it takes forever, and I often switch to other tasks instead because of this.

Z-trooper wrote:You have probably seen that I have made a lot of models, right?
Have you ever seen any of my models with skins on them? no
Its mainly because its such slave work and you dont see any progress while doing it (apart from a chess board "yay" - sarcasm) that make it so god damn boring.
I was UV'ing the Negev (~3500 tris) - thats a lot of faces. And after 1,5 day of unwrapping I found out fist have done it. what a waste

I am in the progress of unwrapping a lot of my other models, including the MP5A4 for hamas, but it takes forever, and I often switch to other tasks instead because of this.

static unwrapping sounds better then as you unwrap the object to a texture pallet, so you can see your progress

still takes a hell of along time

I hate it. I'm trying to learn how to do it but it takes so much time and as stated before, you hardly see any progress at all

well i encounter the same problem but i also have a very messy mesh so iam considering dump this model ( and yes i hate to say it ) and restart from scratch and try to keep a very clean mesh witch also will lower down the poly count so you can ad even more details