As the title suggests, I'm struggling to find an effective way to unwrap my model that both utilizes texture space efficiently and aligns the wood grain properly. Currently, I'm facing either a harsh texture seam or poor texture usage, as seen in the second and third images, respectively.
Definitely the tough part of UV unwrapping: Do you prioritize texel density or ease of texturing? This one is going to be challenging either way as you've already experienced.
I've got two potential ways to unwrap this. Method 1 will likely yield the best result for fitting it all in to your UV sheet, correctly oriented. However, to fix the seams you're going to get, you may need to do some hand painting across the seams in InstaMAT/SP to make the wood grain blend across the UV islands.
The second method will likely allow you to run the wood grain texture along the UV islands a little better and will only result in two islands, however you may run into the issue of having large islands that are tough to fit into the UV sheet, and will likely still require some hand painting to blend the seams down the centre of the handle. This method will also likely require some UV work to straighten out the islands a bit, so it may depend on how much UV work you're wanting to put in!
All in all this is a pretty tough model, given the long and somewhat organic nature of it. That being said, I don't think it's an impossible challenge and I think with a bit of trial and error, you will land on something that works for you! I've been enjoying seeing this model come together!
Method 1
Method 2
