I had some comeback from e-on about the problems caused by material zones being merged when materials are copied from one to another. Apparently this can be cured by unchecking the "collapse identical materials" option. The problem I have is I can't find this option, despite spending some time searching for it. Is it hidden, or am I being blind? Can anyone here point me to it?

I did that myself when I first got Vue Infinite. I remember that option, but for the life of me, I cannot find it again...lol I will keep looking for it and hopefully I will be able to give you the answer... Gareth:)

Now I've seen it too, but I think, but I'm not sure, that this option is only available when importing objects. Again, not a 100% sure.

Yep... 'collapse identical materials' is an option on the Import window. When you open Import Onject (to import from Poser for example), look under the file browser area. The option is right there :)

Now I remember...lol. Thanks agiel and bruno021:)

I don't think there is a "collapse identical materials" available asnywhere else than in the import or load object selection windows. But maybe e-on is a little further on - i asked for this option available inside the program for a long time already. And maybe they test that? Would be nice! What your problem might be - to be honest i don't understand the problem completely is that when you copy a material to another one that the old one disappears. Or when it is not used anywhere else in the scene it is deleted as well automatically. If i run into that i simply create a sphere or cube, position that outside the camera view and give that the material i want to keep for later use. Another interesting thing is the following. When you have a group of objects with different materials and you want to change the group material all in once you can't do it by pulling that material over the icon on the upper right. What you get then is that just the first material is changes, the others are untouched. Same with the change material corner in the lower left of that upper right material display (sounds more difficult than it is). Same result. The only that helps is to right click when you have selected the group and select "change material" in the context window. I think this is all i knbow about materials - outside the material editor. I hope there is something in it that you can use.