CTRL+A in Object Mode to “actualise” everything (all options there).
‘Mark Seams’ along edges where you want to separate your UV islands.
Then try to UV Unwrap.
I’ve been searching for reference links to no avail, but I feel like there are some quirks to getting a clean texture after unwrapping. If anyone can find a reference to these suggestions, please post them here or message me.
Triangles are not your friend. Try to keep to four-sided faces (quads) if at all possible. Note: I understand that under the hood, triangulation occurs at some point, but it might be easier to aim for all quads instead of a blend of tris and quads and having to keep track of which faces are tris and which are quads.
The further from a perfect square or equilateral right triangle you go, the more distortion you invite - especially with such a low polycount. Your mesh topology seems to have face areas that vary wildly. If your faces are closer to the same size and shape, there may still be distortion - especially at low poly counts, but you’ll at least have even distortion.
Add more faces. As you increase your face count, the finer your divisions are, and the less abrupt the changes in UV face mapping will appear. You may be able to get away with just adding a Subdivision modifier with simple subsurf at a level 3 and call it good. I’d still recommend you try to go through step 1 and 2 before resorting to step 3 (which is a bit of a brute force approach).
Well, first of all i would ask: Why those topology? An even if you don’t wanna straighten you topology so that your UV would be more “in line” then there is always project from view (top and/or bottom) or cube projection to begin with.! WingTopo|690x216
