UV unwrapping in blender

Today I was going to model a plane in blender and unwrap it but it turns out I've spent the time just learning how to UV unwrap.

Because blender handles its materials and textures in a way thats a bit different than maya, I was unable to work out how to simply put a reference image on a plane. That's why I've spent today working out how UV's work.

The problem was that a lot of things in maya happen automaticly so you don't think about them whereas in blender it has those properties but you have to turn them on! For example syncing between the UV's and the 3D model. And to cut the UV's you have to mark the edges which the equivalent of cutting, although handily you can unmark edges too so its not like maya where you have to stitch it back together if you accidentally cut the wrong thing.

I found this tutorial helpful;

http://blendersushi.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/texturing-uv-editing-and-3d-paint.html

and this you tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ha2rFR6qO0

And pretty much this is all I've done today....learn how to unwrap a sphere(crappily but it was only so that I would learn the tools)