Good Job Perfecto. I am learning texturing as well. I was getting tired of only being able to see clay renders of my models.

I plan to go back and texture some of my previous stuff. Trying to get the Viper and then my version of Jay's sand speeder done to start.

At first I hated UV's but I am getting better at laying them out so they are not as frustrating. The addition of the "unfold" option in Maya also helps. For third party UV help there is Headus UV Layout, very inexpensive and helpful and the free Roadkill UV pelting application.

Now I am struggling to learn Photoshop CS4. Quite frankly I hate Photoshop. It is completely non-intuitive to me and the tools and hotkeys are crazy. I take forever to accomplish the simplest tasks in PS. The over saturation of tools and clunky integration of raster and vector workflows drives me nuts. The complexity of the tools and non-intuitive workflow sucks all the joy out of painting. Some days it's hard to get any work done because I get to a point where I would rather rub ground glass in my eyes then start photoshop up.

Here are some apps to help with painting. There is Maxon Bodypaint 3D, but it's kinda pricy at almost $1000 US for the latest version. I have an older student version of Cinema 4D which includes Bodypaint, but it is very photoshop-like, so I have been focusing on learning PS first. There was Right Hemispheres Deep Paint 3D, not sure what it costs. Then Zbrush and Mudbox have projection painting. A low cost alternative to Photoshop is Jasc Paint Shop Pro.

Cheers and Good luck with your texturing.