The bulk of the .obj files I import that have multiple materials defined come in fine, whether it's one object or made up of multiple parts. Case in point, the freebie Dystiopian Air Scrubber model is available as a single .obj file and importing it into Vue reveals it's 9 material zones making it really easy to apply multiple textures, glows. etc. I ended up mapping the main body, but the rest are still simple Vue procedurals applied by zone.

I can say that I've had models that maybe came from Max or Lightwave that were provided as .obj which on occassion behave the way Darklorddc's models are and assume that something was lost in translation, but that's been the exception and not the rule in my experience. Are the problematic models all from the same source or ...?