Just to illustrate the differences between baking methods. Tangent space map is baked as nicely as possible, hard UV edges inc. padding, extra uv islands to help smooth tougher areas, some support loops. As you can see, the object space bake is near perfect. The tangent space bake is good, but has less consistent lighting, and waviness problems on the curve. (This is probably from UV distortion; it's mapped as if there was no curve). The handplane'd version gets rid of this waviness, but still isn't quite as good as the OS bake.
