I have a technical question about UV layout. The thing is, while editing the UVs, I kept the overlays separate like in the attached picture. Each square is 1x1, and only the one with the white background has u and v between 0 and 1. That obviously makes it easier to change things around and identify the different maps/overlays. Now every Poser figure I've checked has the UVs all mapped to the [0,1] x [0,1] square, with the result that when you look at them in Wings or Blender or what have you, you get lots of overlaps and don't see very much at first. But I thought well that's the way it needs to be and was fully prepared to make the final version like that.

Now I've noticed that Poser actually doesn't care. If you apply a texture map, it basically treats it as a 1-by-1 tile and I get my figure textured as if the UVs where all done the conventional way. The only gotcha I've seen so far is that when you apply position-dependent nodes in the material room, you have to use the correct reference point. For example, when I tried out a procedural iris shader by bagginsbill, I had to move the UV center of the iris from (0.5, 0.5) to (0.5, 1.5), because that's where it is in my map. But you always have to make sure you use the correct reference points in such cases, and it shouldn't really matter that much whether those are in the [0,1] x [0,1] square or not.

With me so far? Well my question is: is there any good reason anyone can see why I should smash my UVs together into that one white square instead of leaving them the way they are?

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.