Does Vue 6 Infinite have any means of baking an imported texture map into the material lab so that an external texture image source does not have to be saved for later retrieval when opening the material again. I feel it is rather silly to have to save anything outside of the .mat file.

For example with Genetica i can import any image source and perminately embed it into the genetica .gtx file without needing to re-import it again so i am hoping the Vue's .mats can have the same thing.

What you want is not texture baking, texture baking means baking indirect lighting onto a texture map, to avoid recomputing the illumination over a surface, useful to speed up the rendering process of an animation, for example, to be simple, it recreates a texture map with the  indirect illumination "pasted" on it. Vue Infinite can do this, yes.
What you want is  incorporating the texture into the scene, so you can open your scene on another machine without the need to have the texture on the new machine, or to have the texture incorporated into a material without the need to browse your computer to retrieve the texture when loading this material, am I right?
If so, easily done, when saving your scene or material, tick the "incorporate texture map" box in the saving dialog box.

Quote - If so, easily done, when saving your scene or material, tick the "incorporate texture map" box in the saving dialog box.

Yes, this is exactly what i needed for my mats. Thank You much.          :)

Doh. Yeah, not texture baking. I was thinking there was something not right about they way i was thinking about this.