[Stiglr]

Thoughtful use of "snap together" of vertices on the TCE (not just in the model itself) can really help here. That and the great suggestion you mentioned, of splitting or re-shaping border surfaces to better suit the layout of your new texture.

I've always said AC3D had by far the best texturing system. I see that Blender 2.5/6 has gotten fairly close.... but I couldn't figure out how to get the full, vertice-by-vertice, surface-by-surface control to make these kind of re-mappings go quicker and easier.