heyas; mj -- i usually uncheck use figure names (this ads a :1 to all the figure 1 parts and :2 to all of figure 2's bits...) unless you have two similar figures. this setting isn't pertienent, it just annoys me. :) make sure you do use body part names and if you have props, also check the 'use exact internal name' bit. i dont think it hurts to check this all the time either. i weld body part seams, but somebody had trouble with that... :: :) after all that, i usually take the sucker into uvmapper and turn all the materials into groups. so, instead of having fifty parts with the skin material, i'll have one big honking group that is skin. then if i want to mess with the skin colour/texture, i just need to mess with that. same with the fingernails and eyeballs and junk. if i want matte skin but shiny fingernails, i don't have to open every single little pinky and index digit #3 to apply different materials to skin and nails. the other thing i do is edit the mtl file to use full paths to all the texture maps, so vue can find them on import. you'd also have to change the bum files listings to bmp (or tiff or jpg or whatever they originally were.) once you do all that drudge-work, it makes the importing even more automatic, and it also makes the materials easier to edit.