I'd like to export my scene to one or more of the file formats listed in the File → Export menu: .3ds
, .dae
, .obj
, and so on. Which, if any, of these formats records all the details of Cycles materials – all the types of shaders, RGB curve nodes, all the texture types, and so on? If I make a complicated material in the Node Editor, will the visual appearance of the rendered object be properly conveyed to someone using 3D Studio or Wavefront? I'm not worried about meshes or most other things, just materials.
Lacking any of the software which would normally use any of the exportable formats, I have no way to check by direct experiment. Even if it did work – and even if Blender can re-load an exported file and the scene looks okay – I can't be sure if I just got lucky and unwittingly avoided some tricky feature.