Unwrapped Like a Gift.

The model is finished, well to a point but being a stickler for detail i have a funny feeling i might revisit the modelling stage later to add some obscure detail i missed or maybe just tweak a single vertex. The time has come to unwrap it, which turned out to be a mind melter, I was seeing grey and white checkers for several days after the first day of it.

So basically i had to untangle that shambles of edges vertices and polys into a tidy net of my plane. Im being a bit dramatic as Studio max did most of the work but it still seemed quite daunting, and the whole process took a while for me to figure out.

After removing most of the details i went about deciphering the mess above, started work selecting the different areas of the plane; fuselage, wings, cockpit, tail fin and intakes etc. I flattened each area separately and aligned each part so the checker pattern was as square as possible, and amazingly after some experimenting ended up with this..

I continued this process, gradually attaching each detail separately and unwrapping it as neatly as possible.
Once done i placed them all into the render window, utilising as much of the space as possible and remembering to keep them square.