[ame] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntx10JMl9f4[/ame] This isn't a solution to the problem with indirect lighting. I am bound determined to solve that one too, though.
I've had absolutely not problems with pushing edges to the end of the UV space. If you really want to be safe, have a 1px padding to all of your edges. Just be sure to land it on the border between two pixels and not on top of a pixel. I seriously don't know how to fix this problem with bad tileability in poorly lit areas.…
I would be very surprised if it didnt dilate the bake results... If it didnt then having uvs aligned to the edge of pixels would result in filter seams (assuming its using the center of the pixel for sampling). The actual problem is probably more to do with its internal uv packing. Maybe pushing "unrounded" verts outside…