DreamUV VS TexTools-Blender

I did manage to find a tool for Blender called DreamUV (https://github.com/leukbaars/DreamUV) that seems to work well for hotspot texturing. However, I would prefer to use Maya for this project since I'm more familiar with it.

Honestly, no. You can use Blender and blend file importing and take advantage of it's addons like LevelBuddy and DreamUV(the hotspot texturing in particular), or you can use Qodot.

DreamUV

I did hear about a blender uv add on called dream uv that auto uvs as you work in blender. I haven’t tried it myself but I have some old game developer coworkers who’ve made the switch to blender and they seem to really dig it. https://github.com/leukbaars/DreamUV

Dream UV is a free add-on you can get from it's creator Bram Eulaer's Github page. It allows you to add textures to objects without having to labor over UV maps at all. It uses something called a "texture atlas". Floaters 2 footage by Karl Poyzer. Get the add-on here: https://github.com/leukbaars/DreamUV

Get the add-on here: https://github.com/leukbaars/DreamUV

It's called Hotspot. It's a technique where the software automatically places the faces of a mesh on an atlas texture based on their sizes. Some softwares are doing when you press a button (like DreamUV for Blender or this tool for ProBuilder), while others (like Source 2 or this video which comes from UModeler) are doing it as you edit the mesh, which is a bit more impressive but not that much different.

Thanks for showing me another Blender-Addon i didn't know about...

If you are asking about a way to not have blender change your scale when packing, i'm not sure there is one. You can pack, then use something like Textools to apply the density to the "combined" selection, instead of individual islands. This will keep the density without adding margins. https://github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender

This addon (free) has a rectify and align section: GitHub - http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender

If you know how to mark seams such that UV Unwrap will flatten it without any stretching, you can then use Geometry Nodes to set the position of each vertex to its UV, but I'm not sure how to account for scale. An easier way might be to install the addon TexTools and use "Create UV Mesh" from the N panel

The latest release of TexTools has an option for baking thickness maps https://github.com/SavMartin/TexTools-Blender/releases

Exactly, it's a bit more complicated, but also it's not that hard to understand the basics. To improve your workflow I truly recommend getting familiar with TexTools addon for blender, it can save a lot of time.

See uv mesh tool in textools.

TexTools

Snap/align your UVs to the grid, it makes it far easier to do pixel art. I recently found the TexTools add-on that would've saved me a lot of time for this process!

Oh wait you are baking only normals, i see. That's definitely a problems with topology then. Also, that's a pretty big model, i don't think you should cramp whole model onto 1 uv map. maybe split it into 2? or 3. Check out textools and apply checker map to see where your uv's gone bad, and where you need to work on stretching and on topology more. I could say more if you had a fbx file.