Agree with texture, looks like a lot of wasted space. Pattern on your cable for example could be easily tiled which would reduce your texture space by a ton.
it can create lightmap issues - see the example with the crate here: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html also making objects out of multiple materials can be a performance problem.
If you prefer a wiki with dark text on a light background, log in, go to Preferences, and change the skin. For example: http://wiki.polycount.com/w/index.php?title=Polycount&useskin=modern
^^^^^Definitely name tags. For example, I didn't even realize I was talking to one of my favorite artists, YOU But otherwise, easily the best night of GDC for me
you do not have to set key frames to do this if you just duplicate your mesh. but this is an example of exploding a mesh for baking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgYoXF6QmWw
I love this, very few critiques, if any. I really like this. Some of your UVs look stretched, the workbench for example. Glad you're finishing this up man.
The only example of facial expressions from Epic I can think of is Gears of War, they used bones to animate the face. http://www.unrealengine.com/files/downloads/Jeremy_Ernst_FastAndEfficietFacialRigging2.pdf
I was basically 'unwrapping' in an incredibly messy way to quickly apply flat colors to the right faces to save texturing time and be able to iterate a lot on the palette. Quick example: