Very nice progress. I was also thinking about which workflow is right and the best.
Do you bake the normals with cages? Interesting, haven´t done this often so far. In the past (Blender Version 2.4.xxx) I´ve done some normal maps, but havent done much since version 2.8.
Normally I made the UV`s before the High-Poy Mesh. That works well with small objects, not so detailliert one and rather low poly. Sometimes I run into the problem to have to redone the UV`s, because of some changes I made.
It is possible to copy UV over, little bit tricky and I can´t explained the workflow anymore- sophisticated 😉
but therefor there should be not too much differences.
So, I think the optimale workflow depends on the particular model.
