I am no artist, and I find texture mapping the most difficult part for 3ds max modeling.

Are there any automated tools or helper tools that can make my life easier (total automation would be the best)

Especially when you have to imagine a planar surface that is actually mapped onto a curved surface of the real mesh.

Just don't know how to think about it.

Thanks

Jack

Even if there's a "magic button", it still requires a talented eye and manual tweaking of the generated UVs to obtain polished results. Automation is here to make things faster, not to let you skip learning.

Anyway, if you have money to spend, you can try something like Unwrella: http://www.unwrella.com/features/

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If you don't, you can always get used to the mapping tools 3DS Max offers, which are very, very good. It's the way most people do it.

Unwrap UVW a house:

http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/3ds/unwrap_uvw_mapping/

UV Mapping a character, with Ben Mathis:

http://vimeo.com/27151069

http://vimeo.com/27151114