Poses apply to figures. If you have no current figure, poses don't work.

Somebody discovered that they could piggy-back material changes in a pose file, and mat-poses were born. But they have never worked unless a "current figure" was in the scene. Thus was born the "null figure" - a useless invisible figure you can load so that there is always a "current figure".

But as Sam says, the material collection is the correct approach now.

Drag and drop (P8 and PP2010) of materials and material collections into the preview window now has meaning that isn't the same as dragging a pose.

Also, because pose files can contain animations, they are much more expensive as items in your library. Poser has to open them and read them so it can indicate how many frames there are in the file. It does this even with mat-pose files, because from the outside you can't tell that it is not an animated pose file. This means that materials masquerading as poses are horribly inefficient, and to deliver them that way while knowing that there is a proper way (material collections) is actually disrespectful of Poser users. You're delivering a clearly inferior item that way. I say this because I have occasionally seen vendors argue that mat-poses work in DS and Poser, so they go that way because it is easier for the vendor - and either ignorant of the offense done to the customer, or doing it willingly, which I consider an insult.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)