That's strange, considering that I was told that all of the areas of the ship...ALL..need to be mapped. What does this mean then?
Sorry, let me clarify. When the UV map is created for a vessel (a UV map is just a flat jpeg, as I am sure you are aware), there are areas of the image than can be used multiple times for various areas of the finished model. For example, if you create an area of the map which is say just a red block, this part of the image can be used to texture any area of the finished model which is required to be red. This is fine if you want a simple texture that doesn't have any orientation or finer detail (such as signs or rust streaks). For more complex texturing, the UV map needs have areas for each of the vertices.
Imagine texturing a cube. You could create a simple square image and render the same square on to all six sides, however, if you wanted to make a dice, you'd have to have six unique areas of the image map in order to show the number pips as each of the six sides is different.
The problem with the P6 skin, is that there appeared to be a few common areas. From memory, one such area was the crane. I wanted to texture each face of the model, allowing for vertical streaks of rust and adding bolt heads etc, but the crane uses a very small common area and didn't allow for texturing such fine detail.
All that said, I could be wrong. I started on the P6 and learned much more when I created the Gotlandia skin. I seem to remember not being able to customise areas of the crane with too much detail, but having just looked at the map again just now, I've marked on the attached image where I think it was. It may have just been my inexperience with the map. Also attached is the starting map I used for the Gotlandia, which had a seperate area on the map for each of the Gotlandia's verticies, making it easier to go to a finer level of detail. But even that map had shared areas (look at the renders further up this thread and look at the rear loading doors, the textures are mirrored for each side of the doors.
I don't claim to know much about this topic, as I have more experience with commercial Photoshop use for DTP and web design than reskining 3D models and I am always open to advice from more experienced designers.
