Apply texture before UV unwrap?

Support Materials and Textures
1

I was wondering if its possible to apply a texture to a mesh before a UV unwrap, I’ve always had trouble with texturing unwraps, and I know this is possible in 3ds max. I was hoping blender has some of the same functionality, thanks for helping!

2

With the little infomation you’ve given:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/Options/Map_Input

3

Basically I want to select a number of faces, apply a texture directly to those faces, repeat until the object is covered with textures, then unwrap the textured mesh into what would be the final unwrapped texture.

EDIT: I’ve figured out how to apply materials directly to faces of a mesh, but textures don’t seem to appear, and I’m not yet sure how to unwrap it with the materials baked in.