spFaceCamera.mel will create a new camera called faceCam and will orient the camera to face the geometric average of you selected geometry or subset of selected faces. It approximates the functionality foundin Bryan Ewert's AlignCameraToFaces plugin, better yet becuase it is mel based it should work on Maya 3.x, 4.x, 5.x.

Thanks Sunit!

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The pluggin mentioned in this correspondence is for Maya 4.0
Correspondence by Dru Abrams
dru@persistentvisions.com
www.persistentvisions.com

Are you guys using this plugin ' AlignCameraToFaces ' from Bryan Ewert's
site ( http://www.ewertb.com/maya/plug-ins/index.html )? [with the ' -y '
switch]

I select a face or a group of faces - activate this plugin, it lines up the
camera to the averaged normal of the face selection, occasionally I'll use
the 'View -> Camera Tools -> Roll Tool function to change the camera
orientation if the face selection is quite thin or long. Then I planar map
the face selection with these options set;

smart fit - ticked
fit to bounding box
mapping direction - camera [that's the important one!]
keep image ratio - ticked

I find this keeps your UV's neat and orderly and easily tuned in the texture
editor.

I've used it for months and found it makes texturing in Maya very easy. As a
caveat I'm texturing environments at the moment but have done vehicles in
the same way and I can't see how characters would be that much different.

To tune the UV's further I also use the ' polyRotateUVsByVertex 'script.
This script is also invaluable for fixing UV paste operations that have
pasted the texture the wrong way. It also means I don't bother with the
'roll tool' [see above] as much because this script quickly fixes large
orientation discrepencies.

If you're using Maya3 you'll have to email me (or A|W support) for the
bug-fixed version of this script. The script shipped with Maya3 is bugged.
Here's an extract from a previous mail I sent to a couple of people
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"Have a look in your Maya4 install C:\AW\Maya*.*\scripts\others , and you'll
find a script called polyRotateUVsByVertex

You'll need to source the script first (I have to anyway. I don't know why)

Now if they've fixed it for maya4 you should be able to select a face run
the script (I have it as a shelf button) and it will do what it says on the
can (on slow PC's or heavy scenes it can be slow - if you keep the texture
view open you'll see it working).

If it doesn't work create a shelf button and put the following in the
command section of the shelf editor for that button

$face = `ls -sl`;
polyMapCut -ch 1 `getEdges`;
select -r $face[0];
rotateUVsByVertex();

and make it repeatable."
______________________

The plugin and the script for me make texturing in Maya a breeze. In fact
I'd consider texturing in Maya to be one of it's strong points.