stand-alone material editor?

[Mauritius]

Not really, as there's no agreed interchange format for materials or shaders (even the concept of what each term means isn't consistent across packages).
But there is an app that is very worth taking a look at and which works with LW, Max, Truespace, AM and -- in the near future -- all RMan compliant renderers: DarkTree -- http://www.darksim.com/
This is as close as you get.

The other alternative is to use the RenderMan shading language. There are seven renderers that will understand and render shaders written in this language.
3D app-wise Houdini's VEX also is close enough in syntax to 'accept' RMan shaders with minor modifications.

.mm

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