TQ UV Mapping

It is time to UV map my car model.

I want the painted surfaces to be continuous across parts and scaled the same. As you can see in the picture, it is not how I want.

The hood, doors and roof framing are separate parts from the hull. And this accounts for the different scales on each.

But the basic side of the car is all one UV island and the front is a different scale than the back - also different angle.

Hull is “Angle Based”. Switching among all the other settings just makes it worse. “Angle Based” is the best available.

I know I can view the hull’s UV map when making the UV map for any other part, and thus scale the other parts’ UV map to match the hull UV map’s scale. But that’s not gonna help with aligning the parts if the hull’s UV map is so distorted.

Merging the parts together to get automatic consistency of scale creates other problems when rigging the car in Daz Studio. But even if all the parts were merged, their UV islands would still be separate, and distortions would still make the surfaces appear non-continuous.

I’m using Blender 2.79 and I’ve heard that 3.XX has improved UV mapping. Is it so improved that it will solve my problems by transferring my car model to 3.XX?

I’m also curious whether I could make a copy of my model with all the parts merged, delete everything but the painted surface, re-connect the surfaces into one continuous mesh, and then make a UV map just for that painted surface version of my model. And finally somehow apply that painted surface UV map to the original part-separated model. Perhaps that selective UV map swapping could be done in either Blender or Daz Studio.