/3/ - 3DCG

>>701072
I honestly just pack everything automatically for texel uniformity, then I go back in and pack it manually. Texel density is important, but not everywhere. Sides and stuff that you don't see aren't as important, like on your oven, the back of the handle for example, the bottom of the doors/drawers, underside of the bevels. I usually tuck these away in any holes I have, in the mesh, or any gaps left behind. I'm not too worried about texel measurements, more about "how much detail do I want here?"

Another thing to make sure you know is how seams actually work. You don't have to encompass everything with a seam. Sometimes it's effective to just cut sides apart with a seam that doesn't lead into another and leave them continuous (like pic related's corners). So if you're texturing in something like SP or just Photoshop, you're not looking around for one edge that you can't find.
Seams work like cuts. Which is pretty self explanatory and obvious, but it's a good idea to think about how it would cut if you were doing it with scissors or something. I'm not an expert or anything on UV's, but when I'm doing something cuboid, with 2 sides (front and back), I try to have one island have just the front connected with the sides so they're seamless, and the back on its own. This is also a good practice if you're baking in bevels, because you don't want those bevels split between 2 UV islands.

Basically, just don't surround everything with seams, and your unwrap will be much cleaner and more usable. If you've got a really good unwrap, you can have a really detailed object that looks like it uses a 2-4k map, but only uses a 1k map.