[ok]
applying shaders in WED, good idea but not really helpful for huge projects with big levels, it'd be annoying to have to click on every model and assign shaders so i do think the auto assigning via d3d_automaterial is good..

[however]
currently setting this to 1/2 and i'd have to write a material for almost every texture in the game, this is also another time consuming act plus the 15 character limit is a pain, this feature may seem ok as it is for small scenes but when it comes to a decent level with shaders on every surface then it shows just how much it could be improved.

[what am suggesting is]
i do wish there was a way i could edit some core files on how it reads the names so it'd assign materials based on for example the first 3 letters, this way i could just define some global materials that could be shared, so i could have:

SM_wall1.tga //specular metal
SW_wall1.tga //specular wall
BC_wall1.tga //bumped concrete

the i could have:

MATERIAL* SM_ ={...} //assign shader to all textures starting with SM_
MATERIAL* SW_ ={...}//assign shader to all textures starting with SW_
MATERIAL* BC_ ={...}//assign shader to all textures starting with BC_

i dont know if it can be done like that with the current system, could i edit a file? i may have to edit some core files but it'd make level creating easy because then all we'd have to do is name our textures correctly before assigning them and every map we make would automatically have shaders applied easily.. think its plausible?

for example, every element in the following screenshots has a shader applied, the two options we have now:
-click on each object and apply shaders manually which may cause problems when an object has more than one material
-write a material for every single texture in your level while making sure that the name limit of that texture plus "_nm" is under 15 characters