If you’re actually working on UV layout, I ‘ll probably suggest you to take a look at the work of Snoelk from Germany – Technical Artist at
Piranha Bytes.

He have post an interesting thread (through Polycount forum) on is new Standalone UVpacker, still currently in dev and in Beta but still promising CG tools: IPackThat

Please tell her your support on Polycount or CGtalk for that upcoming « CG amazing must-have tool » !

I’ve take a look on it, and i could say that it’s really promising for the result you can got in few minutes. The next image will talk about that better than more words:

26 % of wasted space in 6 mins > compared to my 21 % on my hand made layout in around 4 h of tweaking.

 And for the Fun after 8 Run to find the Best solution it goes down to 18 % of Wasted Area. So Good !