Some reactions here/

1. For populated scenes with lots of background figures, the end user can reduce texture size at will. No issue.
2. Poser uses texture caching to read textures. Again, no issue.
   3; The number of material zones ? - Default as few as possible.
   Why?
   The end user can add material zones at will inside Poser.
   => But once inside Poser;  it is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of the extra material zones once they are in the figure.

Removing or merging, or reducing extra material zones can only be done externally on the obj file and also requires cr2 work. => Pretty work intensive

Conclusion:
Adding material zones is dead easy inside Poser.
Reducing the number of material zones is impossible inside Poser.

That is why => Default should be : as few material zones as practical.

I wonder if you actually make a lot of complex scenes with multiple, fully clothed characters interacting -- because the only way to really know what the problems are is to discover them yourself. Sure, you can lower the texture resolution for background figs to practically nothing. Some will be fine with procedural skins, even. And having a single map will make reducing those textures very easy.

But what do I do about my foreground figures? Suppose there are six of them, and I need highly detailed facial skins (face, teeth, tongue, eyes, etc) but NOTHING else? I can't reduce the resolution. In fact, I'd probably wish I had more if I were rendering for print size. But I'm stuck loading at least 3 8k maps for each figure (and the 32 bit displacement maps that must be in tif format because Poser won't recognize 32 bit jpgs are huge) -- just for the faces.

Now, you're telling me that I need to create new material zones, cut up those 8k maps, and hope I can figure out how to get them to line up properly -- and THAT'S supposed to USER FRIENDLY?

If you were joking, however, then forgive me. :D :D

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.