SketchUp 8 materials and a Good pipeline for developing meshes? Physics?

[Publik]

I've started playing with mesh after a long hiatus from SL, and I've run into a few problems. I'm not an artist, by any means, so working in 3d only sits right with me when I can be accurate (I like working with Inventor, for example, where I can dimension things).

My current pipeline is design in Inventor, build in SketchUp, post-process in Blender, then import to SL.

I've got a few general questions:

1: When using SketchUp 8, I can paint materials on faces. This looks pretty good, but when I export the .dae from SketchUp to Blender the materials disappear. I can, however, paint colors and have them export correctly. Is there something else I'm supposed to do to get materials/textures out, as opposed to just colors?

[Answered] 2: When importing, how does one get a good physics signature? Even with the highest settings, collision doesn't seem to work right. It says I can also import physics from file, but it doesn't seem to allow me to import (the check box is grayed out).

3: Is there a better pipeline I could/should be using? I've got access to max/maya/etc.

Actually, what's a good pipeline in general?

[Drongle McMahon]

"it doesn't seem to allow me to import (the check box is grayed out)."

That part is a bug. A requirement for the materials of the lower LODs to match those of the high LOD was introduced to overcome some user's problems with associating textures with faces at different LODs. It was accidentally applied to the physics mesh as well. A fix is on the way, but meahwhile, the Collada file for the physics mesh must have materials that are a subset of the materials on the high LOD mesh. See SH-2595.

[Drongle McMahon]

"it doesn't seem to allow me to import (the check box is grayed out)."

That part is a bug. A requirement for the materials of the lower LODs to match those of the high LOD was introduced to overcome some user's problems with associating textures with faces at different LODs. It was accidentally applied to the physics mesh as well. A fix is on the way, but meahwhile, the Collada file for the physics mesh must have materials that are a subset of the materials on the high LOD mesh. See SH-2595.