Texturing my car - Need advice stat

I've been working on my jurassic park ford explorer for a long time and have finally finished my baby. Although now the fun part seems to be over and i've entered the dreaded world of texturing this beast.

I've no idea how im going to texture all of this, the side of the car has many faces and creating not only seperate textures for all faces, but matching them all up too seems nigh on impossible, or at least too ludicrous for what it is.

I made a template for the side of my car, hoping I would be able to make ONE side texture and hopefully align all the faces perfectly, but this is far too fiddly.

Second idea was to make a new flat prim on the side and apply a transparent texture so the texture sites on the side like a sticker, it worked, but it was slightly off.

Can anyone offer me some advice on what I can do (preferably a do-able...sensible route!)

Here's a pic on my problem:

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5725/texturingiw8.jpg

instead of 1prim make two. Have one prim with texture rising from the bottom of the body to the top of the fender and running the length of the door sills. Make another prim that goes from the sills up to the roof line and rotate it inward to match the curve/angularity of the windows and pillars.

I cant get it right at all, such a waste for a great modelled car...I'd love to be able to do it.

Surely aligning all these faces isnt the only way, that makes me want to gauge my eyes out just the thought of it

Casper has the easiest solution. But, fiddly as it may be, lining up all those textures is not impossible.

Drop me a safe copy (mod NO COPY trans) to me inworld and Ill give one side a shot.

You're making this a lot harder than it needs to be. All you need to do is give all parts of the car-side the same number of repeats per meter, slap an alignment pattern on so you can see how to offset each part to make it all line up, and then replace the alignment pattern with the real texture when you're done. It's tedious for sure, but not hard, and certainly not impossible.

Assuming you've got a texture that already fits the shape properly, I could have it aligned across all the prims in about five minutes. It might take you a bit longer, since you're just learning how to do it, but don't get frustrated. As soon as it clicks, I promise you'll have an "Oh duh!" moment, and you won't be able to believe you ever thought it was so hard. It's really not.

If you want a free alignment pattern, by the way, I posted one a while back, at /109/45/214824/1.html .

There are also scripted solutions, which will automate some of the process, to speed things up. I'd recommend learning how to do it by hand before trying any of those out, though. Automation should be used to make things faster, but not as a crutch to avoid understanding.