Well, I tried to have the same problem you have but vainly, it always keep the materials assigned. Is it something you modelled or a downloaded 3DS file ? If it's something you did, I would suggest to save it as an wavefront obj (if you use Max you need a free plugin that you can find here : http://www.habware.at/). Usually, Poser is much more happy with obj as with 3DS file. Hope it'll help, if I found where your problem come from, will post again :) J-L