I finished my shader material class and integrated it into the static model. Then I manually built 2 shader materials and applied them to subsets of the model mesh. All things are going smooth. Next step is to create the DE Material Editor where you can create basic and shader materials before applying them to static or animated models. I imagine importing and exporting of materials will be a part of the editor - more on that later.

Check out my DEScreenShots page to see the shader materials applied.