What didn't work? What you're seeing is pixel padding. Its a good thing, There is no reason to try to "get rid" of it. It helps to avoid errors when the texture gets sized down (mipmapped) in game. If anything you should raise the pixel padding so it fills in the gaps. Apply the normal map to the actual mesh and you'll see…
I'm sorry, i thought you meant to lessen the gaps between the shells, which i did. I didn't realize that what i was seeing was actually pixel padding. Unfortunately i do get errors when's it's applied to the actual mesh.
The issues you see on the edges there could be from: 1. Lack of anti-alaising 2. Skewed edges in your uvs. If the object is straight in 3d, make sure all of your edges are straight in the uvs as well. Having slightly angled edges in your uvs means you need much more texture resolution to clean represent those details. For…