Hi mate,

I did exactly is Mike suggested on a barrel model I am making for a game...

First pick the faces on the top...use 'shift >' to increase the amount of faces you need selected or 'shift<' to decrease. Once you have the top faces selected...assign a blue lambert...do the same for the bottom...assign a red lambert. Pick the main body of the barrel (still grey lambert) and assign yellow to these faces.

Open your hypershade...RMB over blue lambert..then 'select objects with material'...go to the 'top' viewport...then up to create uv with camera. you now have the top uv you can then go to UV editor and select the UV's move the off the grid and use the smooth tool to spread them out. Do the same for the bottom.

For the barrel, same thing, hypershade...select objects with material...then do a cylinder uv...make sure you grab the locator and 'pull' the UV cylinder envelope 'around' the barrel...you can smooth these too if you want but I would leave it as a rectangle as in the pics.

Its a pain UV mapping...I learnt this from Kurts Spitfire tutorial and havent forgotten it. You then assign a checker shader to them all once you are happy with it...then you can see whether you have weird goings on before you texture. Its all about the planning and how to go about it.

Im like dom and ND a lot (depends on the geo) with auto mapping....but it can be tricky. For now use Mikes (and maybe mine) suggestion until you get the hang of it.

Hope I have helped...good luck mate

cheers bullet

P.S if I missed a step let me know...Im at work so this is rushed.