Thanks, its good to hear I wasn't missing an obvious solution. It's good to know what I ended up doing was pretty much how its done.

My .cr2 already has the smart prop loaded to it and D|S loads that just fine. It even looks good in GL. I was looking for someway to save the user the extra step of having to go load the prop or go load the prop's material preset. But that's just how it is.

Thanks for the explanation.