From what I know about normal maps and baking 64 padding is the normal amount used. Im running into issues with details bleeding over onto other uvs. The only fix I can think of is to really space out the uvs but that seems illogical as it would have to be drastic to avoid this bleeding. If I use 4-8 I dont get this bleed…
Oh ok that makes more sense. Yeah just mask the padding or do the padding all at once in post with the photoshop filter. If you're adding in extra elements the photoshop filter is probably best. There is no magic ratio of spacing to padding, this isn't really how it works. The problem is not a particular amount of spacing…
Yes. You could use 1000 padding, as long as all your uv elements are represented at pad time you won't get any overlaps. I usually use like 64 or 96 or something pretty high to fill in all the empty spots. The only real drawback to using high padding is the time it takes to render the actual padding.