For a human form, I use pelt mapping through out, but I do it separate groups. (I use Modo to do UV mapping work, so I just discuss generalities here.)
I cut off the head, hands, and feet and do each of these separately. For the head, I tend to have a cut along the hairline and down the back. For hands I usually cut them laterally so that palms and backs are two separate islands. These flatten nicely. For feet, I cut off the soles in a loop and then slit the tops up the back along what is the Achilles tendon.
For the remaining headless, handless, and footless body, I cut along the sides so that it splits into front and back. This means there is a seam that runs from the ankle right up the outside of the leg along the side of the torso, under the armpit down to the wrist; another two seams runs along the neck and down the arms on each side; and a fourth seam runs up the inside of each leg and under the crotch. This splits the body into front-back pieces.
There are other ways of doing this, of course, but as general method, it should give you relatively flat, low-distortion meshes which are relatively easy work with in an image editor.
If you are doing all your texturing in Zbrush, and you don’t mind not having hand-editable maps, you can also try PUV tiles which should give you relatively low-distortion maps.
-K
But I’m not a quitter and want to beat this burden, but I need help. Any help, pictures or links would be greatly appreciated.
