ahh mine are getting a unique ID,just that I'm not doing it via multi-subs,I drag & drop my material from the material editor.each slot gets a new id, I have noticed that an imported mesh has multi-subs,& that's the only time I ever use them, I'm thinking here of one of my models with nearly 100 materials.all combined into one multisub & max was too slow to use

Cg Society Portfolio