[AWBenson]

Unfortunately, no on both of your questions. Carrara doesn't have any form of pelt mapping like Hexagon 2 has.

You simply have the default methods of unwrapping from within Carrara, planar, box, cyclindar, etc. And Carrara doesn't allow for seems, so that is one reason as you have to use a run about method to create a seem in the UV mesh, as seen with the animated gifs.

You can simplify some of it by using alot of shading domains, but then it's tendious from another area.