Best way of setting up/working on a UV file?

I’ve now started to take my first tottering steps towards texturing my wyvern model, but I’ve got a feeling I’m doing it wrong. The file I’m painting on is a 2048x2048 PNG (though it also seems to work with a PSD), but even at that size, I don’t have a lot of space for small things, such as eyes, spikes, or teeth. Furthermore, once on the model, the texture is a lot darker than it was in Photoshop. How would a more-experienced modeler/artist go about this? Or maybe there’s a tutorial (for 2.7) that I could take a look at?

Show us what you’ve done so far?

Pack your uv islands tightly together so that you dont waste texture space. You can also have certain parts of your model share uvs if possible. (this mostly applies for game models) You can also have your model use 2 textures for example the body can have its own set of uvs and the eyes, spikes, teeth, tongue etc can be on another texture. Making your uvs for tilable textures is also a nice way to get fine detail on your model.

A single 2k map really isn’t all that big for a highly detailed character. You might just need to use 4096x4096. For really detailed stuff, it’s common to split the the UVs across multiple textures or use something like Ptex where this isn’t an issue. Multi-tile UVs aren’t well supported in Blender though, not to mention they’re a pain in the ass to do by hand in 2D (you said you’re using Photoshop). Things like eyes and teeth you might want to do as separate materials entirely.

For the darkening, it’s hard to say without looking at the file. My first thought would be gamma correction, but unless you did something weird in Blender or PS, that shouldn’t be happening. Are you sure it’s not just the lighting making it look darker?

Here’s the skin:
http://orig04.deviantart.net/2fcb/f/2015/078/a/e/canyonwyverntexturedone_by_fennecfyre-d8mav6z.png Ignore the ‘done’ part of the name, obviously it’s nowhere near being done xD I just used it for test renders. I’ll be creating a whole new file and redoing it once I figure out what I’m doing.

Using separate UVs sounds like a good idea for the smaller bits, as is arranging pieces to take up as much space as possible. though I’ve never used anything like PTex and I’m afraid to touch the more complex stuff until I’m not just banging on the keyboard like a drunken monkey.

CanyonWyvernAnimatedRemodeledMirroredv1.blend (3.61 MB)
Here’s my blender file, J.

Thanks for the advice, both of you!