It seems that whenever I see a texture, it's all nicely placed together with everything fitted into place. Now when I texture my objects I find a reference pic, paste it onto a 512x512 TGA file, and UV map it from there. Of course, this isn't the professional way to do it, and I'd just like to know exactly how to stick everything onto a 512x512 sheet and then texture it all. Sorry if that makes no sense; I'll elaborate some more if you don't understand.

you should never make a UV map fit a texture, you should make a texture to fit a UV map, always map out the model first then paint a texture to fit it. first map out your model then apply a white image to teh model and then go into the UV editor preferences and change the UV mesh color from yellow to black and turn off the red overlay markers then hit shift+S to stamp it into a .tga file so that you can paint over the UV maps. your end result should be a white image with a black wireframe of what your UV map is.

Hehe, that was precisely what I was looking for. Thanks minilogoguy!

well actually you should stamp it as a photoshop image so that you can keep all the layers and such preserved and have top quality then when your done texturing the model you can export the texture as .tga to the same folder that the .msh file will go to. (forgot the extention for photoshop images :S )

Photoshop is .psd, Mini'.

yeah i know i just got home and remembered, dont know how i forgot when i use that format all the time.