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?

I've been away from SL for about a year and a half, and have been wanting to peek back in with mesh support on the way, but even with that I fear that Linden Labs isn't really doing much aside from basic maintenance. Where is their development roadmap, and if there is none what aside from mesh support are they working on? I tried to go across sim borders and they're still just as **bleep**ty as 5 years ago, go figure.