I am having some troubles dealing with the materials used by collada… the problem is quite complex, so I’ll extend a bit, but first, an introduction to the problem:
basically, my 3d engine uses a custom multipass rendering system, it’s architecture is somewhat like the DirectX FX file format, and the big problem is that every material requires much more data than that defined in the standard collada 1.4 specs, but also that exported by any current plugin… well… I’m not only talking in terms of data complexity, but also in terms of data structure.
For example, in my engine I can define a material that has a procedural texture (eye-normal envmap) multiplied by a decal texture, then the result added to the screen with additive blending… so, how can I design a collada material that can be interpreted as this one, in a generic (non cgfx) way?
One thing that would really save my life would be to be able to assign a text script to a 3dsmax material (in the materials GUI), so I could set custom properties there), then, collada would export it as a “material_script” or something like that, then my engine would get that script and interpret it as it needs.
but, to begin with, I have no idea how to assign a random text to a max material, and, even I am able to, I don’t think any current plugin would be able to export it…
I bet many others are also thinking in this problems, so any ideas will be welcomed!