Carol Ashley shows an easy method to unwrap rope or other weirdly shaped cylindrical objects in Maya.
UVtools have the UV environment in Maya have come a long way since the days before the UV toolkit. Still, the UV process more often than not will depend more on a method rather than tools. An excellent example of this is a technique to unwrap ropes and other deformed cylindrical shapes.
Check out this quick tutorial from Carol Ashley how walks through the process. Ashley uses the Unitize command in the UV editor that will make each polygon fit into the UV space. Once each face is separated and stacked, it is just a matter of creatively making selections to move and sew them back together. A quick unfold later, and you have a perfect unwrap for rope objects in your scene. Ashely thanks Sindre Opsahl Skaare as how she learned of the process.