**@ Heddheld: **Method 1 was my first idea, and like first ideas it undoubtably has flaws. I think perhaps Blender's ability to eliminate duplicate verts might help in that method, but there would probably still be other things that needed to be corrected.

Method 2: I suspected that you probably would like this one more. I have been using it for other purposes, such as creating material zones for my vehicle models and the like. It  makes it easier to create a paint scheme for the model. I'm sure you know that I use Blender as my main modeler, and I export those models to other applications such as Bryce. Because of the way I create my material zones in Blender, When the model is imported into another application, it becomes a simple task to assign materials and textures to each zone. This is because each material zone is its own object. I have folks like you to thank for helping me figure out how to do this. It has allowed me to come up with an alternative to the UV map way of  doing things; although I am still working at doing it that way as well.

As for creating things such as trees, chainmail, and so forth; I think it will be a while before I can get the hang of it. My last attempt, (a simple sphere made of chainmail) was nothing short of a big disaster. It did not look anything like what I wanted. I think that either I missed a step or two, or something was left out of the tutorial I was following that should have been in it, (it was a video tutorial). That is why I like document style tutorials rather than videos. I know that you do as well.

Anyway, thank you for confirming my thoughts on the second method idea.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.