Your UV layout won't influence your AO bake. The only downside to breaking those corners is that it will be harder to paint textures without seams. In a small corner like that it shouldn't be much of an issue though.
Good portfolios? There are so many. http://www.wireframeworlds.com/index.html http://art-machine.com/ http://adambromell.com/ http://www.brameulaers.com/ Or click mine. I think my layout works..got me 3 jobs.
Finished up the character model and did a quick rig to pose. Not completely happy with the model, a few things that need changing. The texture is just a 5 minute thing, not even happy with the UV layout yet.
if you want to have more than 35 images without paying try shownd.com if you want to have unlimited images and more layout freedom then there's free sites like weebly or wix out there.
UPDATED: Finished the concepts/layouts for outdoor Track 2 (A-F configs) for Super Kart Racing. These are concepts for the first outdoor track featured in the game. Want to learn more about the game? Visit www.superkartracing.com
Xoliul - However you pointed out an important thing here, this wouldn't allow to put unique details into the textures. What would be the problem with the 1*1/4 (1024x256) layout? That would be still efficient.
Afraid so, although maybe you could upload the brush and someone can take a look at it maybe? To save custom layout, go to Preference > Config and there you should have Store, Save, etc.
http://ericchadwick.com/img/env_robot_rising.html Unity's lightmapper worked well when I used it about a year ago. It handled all the lightmap assignments automatically, and made layout tweaks much less painful.
very nice work! I really like that spider crab level =) . I think the layout is fine, very easy to see what is what and you know what to expect when clicking a thumbnail.
For environment textures, I prefer a Tall layout for horizontal tiling. The engine my current project is using creates seam artifacts in specular maps with vertical mirroring. I don't have a technical understanding of it.