I'm working on skinning a model for the first time in my life, and I've gotten it to have a texture that I really like, except for some horrible seams.

Model skin (it's a bomb):


In-Engine model:


Now these seams aren't a surprise to me, since I went to no effort to make the skin seamless, but still they are a bit shockingly bad. I did try manually Clone-Stamping and Healing-Brushing in Photoshop to get the edges to match up, but this simply isn't practical--it didn't fix the seams, and it made the edges look very choppy and fake.

It would be ideal if somehow I could use the healing brush directly on the model to fix the seams, and the skin image would then be automatically adjusted in the appropriate areas. Is there some kind of third party tool that can do this?

Or maybe there's another method I should be using. How would a more experienced model-skinner tackle this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help!

You could export it to the obj format and import it to blender 2.49b and then use the projection painting.

Projection_Paint

UVProject

You can use the normal painting tool on the 3D model as well.

But, it is not simple.

EDIT: fogman's approach is much simplier.

Do a search in your GS folder for "earth.mdl" and take a look at the texture and the uv mapping.

That's awesome--I see it. Now any tips on how to apply that same kind of thing to my model? I tried exporting the skin mapping from earth.mdl and then importing it to my model, but it looked terrible, I think because earth.mdl is significantly higher-poly than my model. So how can I create my "own" mapping that same way for my model?

In MED it would be really a pain.
Try it in Blender with different unwrap methods.

Maybe someone with more blender experience can help here?

med -> objekt -> generate mapping -> 2 sided/Atlas
is good for a bomb like this!
will someone ride this bomb?
xxxxxxx

You could try importing it to blender (the last beta version is very easy to work with). Then just create materials for it just if you are going to render it. Mark a seam and unwrap the model. Then bake the texture, there are very good tutorials for doing this on the internet. It's not so complicated. You can also create normalmaps for the model by using the texture baking method.

There are some great tutorial here: http://www.blendtuts.com
There is still no texture baking tutorial on the website but the author is releasing a three part series about UVs & Textures. He only released now the part one but it will be enough to know how to unwrap.

Unwrapping the texture is the most complicated part (only complicated if the model is complex, but will be no problem for that bomb). I am now on an other computer and I don't have blender here, but you can find the texture baking button somewhere in one of the right panels (If you didn't change the layout). Look for it, I couldn't find a screenshot or tutorial to show you. I's easy to find.

If you don't have any experience with blender go first to this tutorial.
http://www.blendtuts.com/2010/06/blender-25-interface.html

I also recommend you watching the materials tutorial for creating your material. Although it's very simple.