What is the best way to unwrap certain things, such as a cylinder,

cylinder projection

>>508850
seams are inevitable in most textures. What you want is to blend the textures on top of the seams, after creating a unwrapped map.
Exporting the model to Photoshop do the trick, but you can try Zbrush to handpaint the thing if you´re desperate.

>>508850
not using standard 2-d mapping.
what you want to use is 4-dimensional tesseract mapping

>>508853
This still creates seems.

>>508859
may i ask why do you care?

Is using the smart unwrap ever acceptable?

What could it be used for?

>>508850
>seems

It's pronounced SEAMS, and you just need to follow a basic photoshop tutorial on how to set up an infinitely repeating wallpaper, then apply that same technique to the edges of your texture map.

It's really quite simple.

>>508897
>pronounced SEAMS
I meant to write "spelled", but fuck it

>>508897
>infinitely repeating
It's pronounced TILEABLE.

In Gimp:

Once you have created your texture layer, make sure it lines up perfectly with the UV area you want to be a seamless texture and:

Layer->Transform->offset

Divide the layer by two for the offset and you will now be able to see the seam for the texture in the middle. Edit it out with healing brush or whatever. Done.

>>508859

It's because you texture isn't seamless.

>>509136
This