Should probably just save you a lot of time and say no, they're nothing alike.
But -- IF you really want to use Maya for prop building you will need to lay out an objects UV coordinates (the part of an object that holds information on where to place texture/normal/displacement maps)
Well yes and no. Pepakura seems to hold the same proportions of the faces. In UV unwrap programs they do tend to get smooshed
But it's somewhat alike for sure.
Maya's UV editing program has been buggy for years. They've gotten a little better, but most artists are too impatient to just deal with the quirks and work around the problems and instead task their scripting buddies to write stand alone/plug-ins like Roadkill.
In my opinion, Maya's UV editing works perfectly if you know exactly what you want and how to manipulate the settings. You'll need to adjust the "Unfold" options under the UV editing window. For the 100% flatness that Pepakura creates you will need to set the world slider to 1.0
Now, setting that option and hitting unfold almost always doesn't do what you want - which is where most people just use other programs. You need to be smart about how you lay out of the UVs and when to use the different cut/stitch tools. If you're smart about how you model, you can just select certain faces in batches and unfold. I generally run an automatic unfold operation then work from the largest "UV shells" first.
Even if you get any of this done, and create a UV snapshot to bring into photoshop/illustrator you still won't have numbered tabs :/
So in a nutshell if you're on a Mac then you may have better luck finding a way to run windows alongside your OS.
But other than pepakura, Maya can be used for just about anything else
