I wouldn't pay much attention to how the exported models look, it's quite likely that they've just done something incorrectly during the export that's broken the textures/shader. I think you're right in that it's using vertex colours for blending, although even if it's not, that's going to give you the effect you want…
OK I figured out what the export between MAX and CryEngine is for Cameras - I'm gonna make a proper write-up of this at some point but this might be helpful for you already: The CryEngine expects Collada files to not use a unified Matrix and to have FOV values in y-FOV (the height of your screen is important, not the…