Texturing confusion

I think ive got notmal uv mapping down where you save the uvtemplate and draw over it.

However, how on earth do you do basic texture mapping!!!
The screenshot below is a cylindrical sewer pipe i want to map some bricks too. When i try and cube map it i get the following result on the uv panel. Surely a cubemap would stretch the map along its length (so the grey bricks at the end would literally be at the end of the tunnel and same (but the other side) at the other end.

I cant seem to find a realtime way of cylindermapping and scaling the texture.
www.d-grafix.com/temp/Screenshot.png

Also, i try changing the modifier in the materials panel to tube instead of plane, but nothing i do here seems to effect the uvs at all.

I dont understand why the UV mapper and the materials sytetm is so separate from each other, ie, if i load an image into the texture list surely i shouldnt have to load it again in the UV panel?!?

Think im missing something somewhere

I’d try marking a few seams on the object and then select unwrap in the UV panel, as in section off the top and bottom with seams then mark one edge that goes along the length as a seam.

I tried marking the seam out it then went weird and did the following (i stretched it up in Y) The jagged sets of uvs are at the bottom.

Surely i dont need to unwrap anything, in any other program, i would simply select cylinder map and stretch it to size/enter repeats etc.

www.d-grafix.com/temp/Screenshot-1.png

Map Input -> Orco, Tube.
You have to use an image texture.

No realtime (i.e. not in the 3D-window) preview.

ahh, ok thanks.

Thats no good for me unfortunately as its not for rendering, its for X export to a game app and i need to see on screen what im doing (otherwise ill be there all day doing render previews to get the repeats and offset right.

Its a shame because i love blenders modeller, and the uv system is good too, but the actual materials system appears to be unnessacarily complicated.

is there a way of converting ORco (whatever that is) to UV ? because this might solve my problem.

I finally managed to do it in sections by using map from view 1/1 but it took a while to ‘knit’ all the missmatched UVs:
http://www.d-grafix.com/temp/Screenshot-2.png

Shift-P for a realtime preview.

Will those orco coordinates be exported though? I though export meshes exported UVs

Your mesh is a mess, get rid of it… Add a tube in top view. Mark a seam down one side. Unwrap and apply texture in uv editor. Go to edit mode and extrude from top view. Right click to keep extruded verts from moving. Scale inward from top view. Now you have a stone tube with thickness perfectly mapped, just like a wishing well. In objectmode you can view the texture on the mesh via shaded draw mode (Alt Z).