Hi Chris,
actually, I don't use meta anymore, because I became unsatisfied with the texture mapping. It usually ended up cutting the whole plane in rather small patches where I would have preferred something seamless.
I've been switching over to , which is freeware as well and offers rather advanced unwrapping tools.
The workflow is completely different to meta: You don't create the texture layout first, then put it onto the model, but rather unwrap the model to a UV-layout, a flat 2D-Version of the mesh. After the UV-layout is exported, the rest of the work is indeed done with the GIMP (or Photoshop/Paintshop, whatever you prefer).
Making a model look like a model with glow engine, servos etc. is a good design decision, but I prefer to model after real world sources because I might want to put the models into other simulators as well.
Kind regards,
Frank