Floating geometry certainly make UV mapping a more complicated, but as to your question I would like to know as well. I do it but I'm no pro and amateur at best in uvmapping and texturing.
No no - lower polys is always good, as long as you can get away with it. Makes the model significantly easier to uvmap. I wish some of my first models had looked that good.
I get often those issues, even if the uvmap is perfectly clear, , the lp model is perfectly matching the high poly one , so I do not understand why I get those artefacts?
Anyone get hardlocked video card failure freezes with Radeon HD5/6? It doesn't matter how complex the model is - it happened to me while I was uvmapping a lowpoly model on a 128x64 texture.
@jonas-144, that looks amaizing!!! Can i see the second uvmap channel of the wall mesh? i could never fix the problems i had with lighting on my modular wall pices
Quake despite its rather rudimentary and unoptimal uvmaps, it still holds up artistically, so much that every attempt to remake its art in a better technical form never did it justice
when i had my old computer wich sucked balls i used to make a simple plane then uvmap it and make the highpoly parts on that, then i would add in the detail through photoshop.
a uvmap doesnt necesarily have to have that jigsaw puzzle layout most effcient environment assets have lots and lots of crazy overlapping uvs reusing/sharing pixels when ever possible.