Yeah all good points. In this case all pillars had individual details, so cloning wasn't an option. On the other hand, the decal idea is pretty good. That could have worked for this. Ok! I think get it now, I appreciate your help with this! :)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by Material ID here? To me, that's a baked map representing materials for quick masking during the texturing phase. It sounds basically like you went the UDIM route for these pillars, making everything fit the best you could while making it relatively painless to work on. Having…