I have some materials in bryce5 and 3d max 5 does anybody know how I can get just the materials form there into poser5 materials folder

You can't - they don't use the same procedural nodes. To approximate them, you'd need to open each one up in its host program, note down all the settings, then play around with the P5 material room until you've found something you like.

It is possible to kind of sort of not really export a bryce material. If you have a terrain object you can export it and whatever materials are on it. Bryce makes an image for all the parts needed for the texture. You would need to use those images to approximate the material elsewhere. Might be possible in Poser5, but Poser4 has no reflection/refraction. About 3DS? I have no idea

Yeah, that's right on both accounts. Lyrra, I use that trick too. The third option would be to put your material on a 2d plane, render, then use UVmapper to map it to your poser object.