The solution is too complicated. But, yes, it can be done and you also described the solution. VertexMaps for the simulation, Fields for the vertex maps, vertex maps for the materials (use the Vertex Map Effect as a Mask under a Layer).
Chris would love that kind of question yesterday in RocketLasso.
Best thing about Betatesting is the access to Maxon's Development Forum which is a goldmine of knowledge. It is an place of power users meeting Maxon devs and has tremendous value. But it also had the sad effect that these people do not go to public places like this anymore like they used to. A lot of people who once where driving forces in the C4D community forums are there now dropping knowledge while having obviously left places like this.
I've got 2198 bug reports from the past 20 years
Some are not reproducible, so there's no way to test if it is fixed
Some happen so rarely... people just have better things to do with their time
Some are in parts of the app which are scheduled to be replaced so there's no point
Some are limitations of the app and will never get fixed
Some just randomly stopped happening one day and nobody knows why
And the other half are Octane crashes
BaDumTsss.mp3
The number of bugs will always exceed the number of bug fixes until the heat death of the universe.