How to unwrap and texture Uneven cylinders

Thunderbeast

I am modelling a simple earthen jar and I will have to UV and texture it. Its essentially a cylinder with a wider middle. If i unwrap it by making a seam from top to bottom and get a nice even rectangle i will get uneven textures - larger pattern at the middle compared to the top and bottom. I can totally get away with this by using a texture with minimal vertical pattern, but i want to learn how to UV such a cylinder with minimal stretching. I won't always be able cheat after all.

Bek

There's no real 'cheating' involved in UV's, you just have to decide between more seams and less distortion, or the other way around. That's a simplification because you will also be taking into account splits caused by seams, and where hard edges can/should go (more on that here), but for the problem you describe, those are your options. Luckily, it's easy to slap a grid pattern on your object and quickly compare results of different unwraps so you can see what works best in each case.

Thunderbeast

Ok, very helpful answer. Good to know that i am not missing some kind of a trick. In therms of hard edges, splits, normals and so on, i had a asset to unwrap that made me understand those concepts and that video was part of the learning process (super informative) .