You may also be seeing the effects of using ZBrush, which allows you to “paint geometry” that then comes out in displacement/normal maps. Also, the higher versions of Photoshop lets you paint straight onto a 3D model.
Also, good UV mapping coordinates is a skill, and takes some time – it’s not automatic! Although there are various tools that help in various packages. 3ds Max has a robust set of “peel” and “pelt” tools that can work, as well as a few automatic maps (flatten map, unwrap map, etc) to get you started. I don’t know what Blender has, but given that it’s Python and open for hackers, I’d be highly surprised if there weren’t at least some scripts to get you started.