it's not the number of materials, which is an issue to me at least.  it's that everything is on the same texture.

so, for the holographic interface, there are 7 materials.  but instead of  each of them having its own texture map, the whole thing uses one.  so to render any single part well at middle distance, i needed to set my max texture size to very, very large just for it not to look completely awful.  so instead of using one 100 x 800 texture or whatever, i had to allow for a texture up to 2000px by 2000px.  which would be issue enough with the prop itself, but i had other figures with other textures.  human textures are sold at a resolution that allows for close-ups, so they're very, very large.  if it's not a portrait, in poser you can just set your max texture size as high as it needs to be.  i don't usually go above 1028  and i could have gone much lower than that in this pic, because the figures just weren't that large a portion of the image and i wasn't rendering at that high of a resolution.   in this case, my picture was bogged down because of one prop that needed a huge texture because each material used the same one rather than lots of separate ones.

quote:
**We don't put everything on seperate maps, because then Poser would need ten times the amount of maps, and your rendering would become a long and tedious process, but we do include all these options for the user who wants that extra little bit of control.
** 
i'm trying to say, it's much more resource intensive to not only have to large one huge map, but several huge maps just so that the prop renders well.  think about something at screen resolution that features your van.  a person would be, what 1/10 the overall size of the pic?  but because the van needs one huge texture,  the human figure has a texture at the same or higher resolution, and as far as i know there's only one control on max texture size for an entire document, the 4 different a-team members one might put in the image will mean 8 new 2000px textures just for their bodies instead of 8 new 600px textures because the van's texture needs to be up to 2000px in this completely hypothetical situation.

i'm not suggesting you remap.  i'm just letting you know that i personally had performance issues precisely because of the tactic you're presently using to reduce performance issues. 

oh, and i haven't noticed a performance hit on numerous smaller or medium textures.  i've had less issues (as in none) with using stonemason sets (lots of different textures) than i did that pic with the sanctum art  holographic interface.