Quote - I had imported with the "Group Figures as single meshes" option and it automatically named the two characters and 3 clothing objects as "body".  But I had changed the names for each figure specifically to Michael, Vicky, Shirt, Pants and Shortsbefore applying skinvue, with the results shown. 

I'll try splitting them off into separate files and pull them up separately to see what happens.  Thanks.

Make sure when get ready ready to swap you re-select the individual target object you want to swap materials for.  So for example start with your Re-named Michael character first, select it, then swap.  Then select your Vicky character and then swap.  If you select the global group containing the entire set of sub-figures, you'll get the result of a shared set of materials as shown in your result.  In some cases, this may be desireable ifyou want to apply a common set materials across a group of characters (provided they share the same UV mapping and material types).  In your case, you need to swap each character individually.