hello, I have a question which software is best for mapping textures on 3d models. I use 3ds max but max is unable to write crop information into texture coordinates, thus I have to move texture mapping into another software. I have tried maya but all I learned was that it is fairly unusable program. I am lost. I need a decent mapping software and I wonder what you would recomend me.

What is "crop information" ?

Tons of people use Max/Maya for laying out UVs

As for Maya being unusable, it's extremely widely used amongst professionals, so it's far from unusable, but you do have to learn your way around it

Good uvMapping tool for organic models.

http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm

/Tyrian

unwrella rocks for unwrapping your organics, or just automaticly unwrapping them. In 3ds max - once you've defined the seams, you can render your textures with the render to texture window - this gets you the desired textures, bump, normal, diffuse light. You can then take these maps, and put them into any paint program, IE photoshop. You can actually load your 3d models into photoshop now, and overlay your desired textures directly onto the model, it will even compensate for the seams :)

If your using something like mudbox you can in 2010 generate your normal from there, and if you unwrapped your model correctly, it should load the texture correctly into it, using photoshop you can also drop in textures, and it will compensate for the seams in mudbox, additionally you can paint directly on your model from there, and generate a fairly high detail difuse texture.

Having these programs compensate for the seams is great, you can also use laying in photoshop to paint directly on your flats you rendered as a difuse map - then after you have put these back on your 3d model, you can load your model in photoshop and minimize the seams by going over them with the clone tool. Hope this helps :)