Does anyone have an explanation for this ? I run into this, I have a mix-material for a groundplane made up of both procedurals & a mapped pic. If I put a primitive in the same scene as that plane the material goes from plane to cylindrical on the ground. If I pick a different mat for the primitive this doesn't happen. Changing settings has no effect.

You mean to say that the mapping of the ground plane goes from planar to cylindrical? That's what it looks like. But only as long as you're using the same material for both? How are you applying the material---manually, or drag/drop? I've seen Vue do some funky things with materials, particularly in the Summary dialog--- sometimes at least there, it helps to change the name of the material. Or maybe renaming a copy of your bitmap or jpg or whatever and applying it to the primitive manually could help. Vue's got some strange quirks, for sure!

Just love the way Vue gets funny with you. Try and do the mapping for the ground as the last step. Let us know :)

Perhaps the mixed material is altitude dependant? If that's the case, the cylinder is definitely the highest point of the plane/cylinder combo. I'd suggest editing the material for the plane, using the material editor on the right side of the screen. Just change the name of the material, nothing else. Then, also using the material editor on the right side of the screen, change the name of the material on the cylinder. After that, the material should behave more as expected for either/both objects. Let us know how it turns out! :)

ground + 1 object = OK if either object-orientation or shadow unchecked on the groundmaterial ground + 2 objects = OK if both object-orientation and shadow unchecked on the groundmaterial ground + 3 objects = OK if I use Varian's renaming tip which also works for less objects and yes the material was altitude dependent , above goes even for objects that have their top at groundlevel my thanks :)

Great news! :)