My workaround didn't bring the result I was hoping for; black streaks remained visible in the metallic surfaces. Since that looked much like a dead end I started a new, empty DAZ scene, and one by one imported the .obj's again. After assembling the craft and editing the surface names for all the parts in the Polygon Editor, I set up an all new render job in Reality. This time I selected 'Lux native' for the geometry, thinking that could only be a good thing. Lux started rendering, and to my utter disappointment the same parts came out black again. So I'm done with this, its not going to work, period.

Never had this happen before, hope I'll never have to waste so much time on it again.

Cheers! (well, actually not)

Erik