Sounds very interesting ventilator. I really support this ideas and if I can help you with models and textures then just contact me.

Material support is interesting but currently not needed. Maybe it makes sense in the future with new procedural shaders. But even in a rendering application a procedural shader is much slower than a texture with uv-map.

So my advice to all gamestudio users is to use textures with uv-maps instead. It looks better is more flexible and will be the standard for a long time.

Materials are an easy way in an application but look not very realistic in a game.