A lot of things like seams and bumps can be part of a normal map. Unfortunately, at this point, normal maps appear to only be formally supported in BI: in Cycles, it's still a WIP, although there is some discussion on BA that it might be included in as soon as 2.65.

As far as extrusions (and pleats) go, I'm no expert, but it might have something to do with setting Transform Orientation to 'local' instead of 'global' and your Pivot Centre to individual origins... seems I read somewhere that should be a reasonably good solution.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks