Hi Michael,
I just saw this post. I haven't been here for a long long while. For many reasons, mainly because I gave up sweating blood the way you do, and described above. We have the same issue in the office and I sent this request to the development but the answer was that, not many people using ArchiCAD with EIAS. I don't think that stands so much the truth but let's say, ok, it's true. I would also wonder how many people are still using EIAS anyway following the late release of 9 and ownership change etc, but that's an other story. However I still love it, it's powerful, but I had to cut out from our working process and the reason we kept it updated because I personally hoping that EIAS 9 will be updated and maybe the working flow in EIAS will be better and counterbalance the time setting up materials especially when changes are happening in the ArchiCAD model.
The ideal plug-in should work similar to Maxwell plug-in (which we use, not so happy with that but for stills it's good, and saves time with the material setups however for animations even with our 48 core farm maxwell takes waay too long)
so something like the maxwell plugin- where I can select the EIAS engine as rendering and shoots out to the camera app or renderama. the only isse i hate is that the AC camera is really bad for animation and rather use EIAS cameras. but for that you need a good way to update changes in the model. OR the cinema4D plugin for archiCAD is also pretty good, but i hate fact that i loose the layer structure, that's when i decided not to bother with c4D.
i also have problems with normals. AC has a bad FACT export so all the normals usually BAD (inside pointing) and i always use transporter to fix it. extra process... actually we all should be happy that Graphisoft left the FACT export in ArchiCAD. somebody needs to revamp it. So i don't' even know if that FACT 2.9 format will import good in EIAS 9 - when finally EIAS 9 will be released.
So let's cross our finger for one thing. that fact format will work. otherwise the OBJ and 3DS export is a hell, loosing the layer and material structure with those.
now what we can do is just keep crying and maybe somebody will write a proper export or plugin. untill, we loose production time or not use EIAS. have to choose. or just use in combination with others. I learned that over that 6 years using AC-EIAS combo.