Huh, I have Unwrap Pro actually and it seems to have mostly done what i was looking for. That said I didn't know you could define density via soft selection? So how does that work exactly, I just select the verts in the areas I want more density and then unwrap it or something? The video and page don't really mention this…
Yes I tried selecting the front parts of the face and scaling them up, pinning them and then re-unwrapping them but it doesn't work out too well for me. Not sure if there's a more effective method of going about this as I do not know of any tutorials that cover this.
To add the list of all these great tips: Experiment with some of max's other tools: including the move and relax brush for local tweaks, it's got strength and falloff settings too. And if you happen to have UnwrapPro, you can define density via vertex colors or soft selection. AFAIK the plugin won't let you lock border…