I'm not particularly fond of introducing "magical" names into Poser content, but some mechanism for storing per-material, per-object and per-scene settings is definitely needed. The database approach that ADP suggested has its merits, but it's not the most practical for sharing those settings with other users. Content creators in particular would need some way to package that information into the usual zip files. So as far as I can see, there are two options: find some sneaky way to add them to the standard Poser files or keep them in separate configuration files that are then distributed with the content. I won't go into the pros and cons of each approach, as that is not exactly a new topic. But we will have to implement at least one of them in the long run.

This is completely separate from the question of how end users should specify settings when running the exporter. We're talking user interface versus persistence layer here - two very different things. Of course there has to be some way of picking objects or materials from a list and changing particular settings for them. And it has to be a damn fine way, too, or the complaints we're already hearing preemptively from people who render complex scenes will never stop.

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