Well, despite what must be hundreds of hours on youtube and pages of PDF's I am still only "close". Have tried blender but so many conflicting tutorials, it seems there are about a hundred ways of doing it but I can only get "nearly there".
Considering all I want is a "bit of texture" i.e slate, brick, sandstone, corrugated sheet on a flat bit of plastic, it seems to be incredibly difficult. I am still convinced that there is a way that is relativity simple.
Blender is as close as I have got.
Crazybump is brilliant but still struggling to apply it successfully. Flat projections, decals, uv unwraps, wraps, the lot.......
Dreading having to go the slow way and extrude each brick/slate/stone etc in sketchup but in all honesty - I would probably have done it by now and not ended up having to learn how to animate a flag with a "wind" force in blender! :-)
:-P