I'm pretty new to 3D modelling and texturing, so when I do a UV unwrap in Blender, I notice that it automatically places the UV islands in a manner that fills the UV bounds without any of the islands overlapping each other, and I typically see everyone else do it this way.
However, for the stuff I'm messing around with in Unreal Engine, I often want my one texture applied over the entire object so I'll grab all the faces from one side of my mesh, Project From View to get those faces on one island (I know I should probably be doing some mark seam stuff instead of this convoluted method, right?), then scale that individual UV island to fit the entire UV bounds, thus getting a "higher resolution" look for that particular set of faces.
I feel like I'm probably doing something deathly wrong by taking that approach, but my models turn out fine in the engine so I'm wondering what I'm missing, especially since leaving them all without any overlap means the UVs have to be very small and often look grainy on my model. What gives? I'd say my three main questions are:
1) Is UV overlap a problem for game assets, or texturing in general?
2) Is there a way more obvious, better way of accomplishing what I'm doing? I often have trouble with unwrapping cylinders and more complex objects with my method, so I'm guessing I need to invest some time into learning to mark seams better.
3) Bonus question if you're feeling generous: Will I need to be taking things a step further with things like baking textures for my uses in Unreal later on?