Why Does Blender Distort UV Maps By Default? I have a simple question: why does Blender distort UV maps by default?

To illustrate my question, here is what Blender does with a UV map of a very simple mesh of a wooden barrel:



And here is what you get with a similar mesh in (I think) Maya:



The difference is staggering: the one in Maya is nice and clean with no distortion and, more importantly, full use of the available texture real estate, while the one in Blender is distorted and with a lot of "dead space." 

Why does Blender do this? How can I get a normal UV unwrapping with isles that is not distorted and uses all or most of the available texture space? 

I have tried conformal UV unwrapping, but other than a slightly smaller distortion it was the same awful unwrapping.
It depends on the model you have as well as the UV deployment method you have chosen, and where you have marked your seams.

The following is documentation on the general workflow of UV unwrap and its use in industry https://conceptartempire.com/uv-mapping-unwrapping/

Here is a blender tutorial on how UV works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7M-B6xnaEM

In this other tutorial you will see more advance UV workflow of blender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3654VGZObg&amp;feature=emb_title

Notably through the use of add-ons simplifying life by integrating tools to optimize the UV space(Tex tools, UV Packmaster...).