You forgot patience and alcohol...
Well, at least I don't notice the distortion.
and tons of smokes, if you roll that way
but yes, UV-ing is a dark, dark art. evil i would say. until you start doing it properly, forget the "auto" tools. Good for quick tile-to-uv conversions or when converting metric ****tons of textures to single uv (*glares at HW2*). But the problem with all auto "positioning" tools is that they rarely pack the stuff properly. for example, getting proper overlaps of perfectly symmetric geometry in the uv is a pipe dream if you want to do it the auto way (after you apply symmetry).
from what i've seen, from C4D and another tool, how their auto "packing" tools work, they draw a rectangle around each UV island, then punt them around together. if you have spindly bits anywhere, you'll be left with a bit of "holes" so to say, where you can alway punt in smaller UV pieces.
TL;DR, short rant that someone with UV experience knows what i'm talking about and everyone else will most likely just stare blankly...
