Material Editor Critical Problem

Hello there,

Some things are very off with Torque's Material Editor. This happens when I work with DAE files... I load a few textures on them, and after maybe 5 or 6 DAE files being used, and with materials applied, the material editor causes Torque to crash. Which is all fine and dandy... that's my lesson to use DTS instead. However... I'm stuck now, because the Material Editor will not even pull up the Material Selector anymore. It's like somehow, this crash totally rewrote the Material Editor's configuration in a way that makes it permanently unusable.

I figure, well what the hell... 1.1 is still in beta. So I revert back to T3D 1.0, and the EXACT same thing happens. 5 textured DAEs later, T3D crashes, and the material editor is broken again, same as before. I've tried loading other missions, but the editor does not change back to the time before it crashed. When I used T3D 1.0 this time, however, I got an error message from VC Express saying that it's a runtime error. When I loaded the level the next time, every single mesh had the SAME texture file. With the material editor broken, I can't even go back to change any of these materials without going through the materials.cs file and editing each of these by hand. And even then, there's no guarantee the editor will read it the same.

Another thing is whenever I load a new DAE into the engine and go to the material editor, it keeps assigning a new "newMaterial?" to it, even though a texture was assigned to that mesh already. It's like there's a memory leak in there somewhere. So for example, if I have grassTexture material already assigned to MeshX.dts, the next time I go to the Material Editor, I'll have newMaterial0 assigned to it, even though grassTexture material is currently being used. If I switch back to the Object Editor, and then back to the Material Editor, I'll have newMaterial1, and then newMaterial2, then 3, and so on and so forth.

This happens not just in 1.1 Beta2, but in T3D 1.0 as well.

I've read in the forums that DAE files are pretty expensive memory wise... and if that's the case then why not have the material editor convert the DAE file to the cached DTS, and then replace that with the DAE file automatically?

Some other issues with the material editor:
1) If you change a texture, it puts an asterisk in the tab, but if you switch from the material editor without saving the change, it reverts back to what it was before the change. It doesn't even ask you to confirm your changes, it just does it. It's rather cumbersome to remember all these little pipeline hiccups when you're concentrated on developing a level, spending hours of work on texture and mesh creation, and then Torque clears your changes without prompting you first. It gets disruptive and really frustrating.

2) Sky cubemaps. I have run into numerous crashes from the cubemap reflections in the Material Editor, both in 1.1 beta2 and in T3D 1.0. If I try to set a cubemap reflection for the skymap, the program crashes. It'll typically take two or three tries before the program actually implements the skymap like it's supposed to.

3) It would be handy to be able to rename the existing material profiles in the material selector...

4) After the above mentioned crash, I wasn't able to create new materials using the selector's "new material" button. It would append another "nomat" icon to the list, but the material wouldn't have a name. Upon selecting it, it would revert to the defaultRoad material.

I'm REALLY nervous about building any more levels with T3D, both 1.0 and 1.1 b2 because the material editor can completely annihilate a level you painstakingly spent a lot of time in by reducing those textures used to a single texture for the whole level! Even if you save early and often! I think this isn't just one critical bug but a series of them... I wouldn't even bother calling a t3d release a beta or a final until a lot of these issues with the material editor are fixed and stabilized. I can't have my levels disappearing like this...