"all the strips created with a particular master object are listed as having their own material even though I assigned the same material to all the strips" If you import the hair.obj into Poser, you can re-assign the materials for each strip using the Group Editor. Then Poser can use the same material for all of them, after you spawn props, assign material and re-export the hair.obj. Going the other route (locks of hair or even strand-based hair) becomes of nightmare of polygon bloat, as you found out. That's one of the reasons the hair generated by Poser 5 looks so awful.