I have a figure, to which I applied an inappropriate MAT pose, and then saved the figure back into the Characters library (new CR2).  This added materials groups to the new CR2.  This irritates me, although it appears to be harmless.  What is the proper way to dig out the bad material group and get rid of it?  I suppose I could nose around in the CR2 by hand and clip it out, but I was hoping there is a way integrated in Poser that does this with some data validation.

You have to edit the .cr2, I believe.  Poser offers no tools (even in Python) for removing materials groups, and the only way to add them seems to be with a MAT pose.

:(

As I suspected :/  Oh well, thanks anyway!

Ditto Cage.  It would certainly be possible to write a Python script for
this, but it wouldn't be significantly easier than plain old editing.

If you know which materials are "alien", it's easy to look in the lower part
of the CR2, find those paragraphs, and slice them out.

Download the Cr2Editor from the utilities section of Rendo's FreeStuff.  Load the The Cr2 into the Editor.  You'll see a column of Actor groups, and at the bottom of the column, it'll say figure, nex to a + sign.  Click on the + sign, at you'll see the various materials.  Highlight and delete the ones that don't apply, and resave the Cr2.  Fairly simple really, once you get used to it. ;=)
David P. Hoadley

That's handy, thanks.

Okay, here's my stupid question for the day (must remember to limit myself to just one). What if you created a default mat pose -- all white figure, no materials... then reload the incorrect figure and apply the default mat pose?

MAT Poses only add extra material groups. They don't delete them. DP gave the best solution. Whenever you apply face textures from the faceroom, that too add's a new material zone called faceroom which negates the use of Skinhead material zones on figures. I never did understand why they did that.

Kalon, it wouldn't work.  :(  The poses can add, but they can't remove.  Once Poser has decided that a .cr2 has junk materials, they stick around until they're manually removed.

(Hoping some Poser genius will come along and prove me wrong....)

Dang - scooped again, while I was responding.  :-P

LostinSpaceman - doesn't the face room actually substitute a new universal head geometry?  Presumably the new geometry has the faceroom material in the .obj.  If you add a new material to a figure .obj without adding it to the .cr2, Poser will automatically append that to the file when you open it.  That's what I would assume, anyway....  

I've figured out another way also, to save a materials collection with the bad group un-selected, and then apply to a blank figure - however I have other issues that make that not quite a perfect solution, at least right now (e.g. dynamic hair is bundled into the CR2).  I don't mind doing it by hand or with the CR2 Editor, at least there's a solution for it!

I use CR2Builder (http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend-Ohgai/9483/) by kim99 for this kind of work.
Free, and quite intuitive.
To delete the redundant materials, scroll down to the Figure section, expand it, scroll down to Materials, expand that node, and delete the materials you don't need (while they're collapsed). Takes care of entire shader node trees.

In P5, at least, the Face room does not create new geometry. It's just a morph tool. Possibly the most dangerous thing one can do in Poser, creating a Face room texture. Not only does the texture suck big time, but the "Face room" material covers all the facial detail materials -- and it can't be removed from inside Poser. Just what you wanted....

M