I don't see a way to rename a material group in the Material Room.

Material names aren't selectable in the properties dialog box, not that I can see at any rate. 

slapping my keyboard against the desk doesn't do it. 

urrrg.  help!!

Thanks

whisper use the grouping tool ;)

whisper Phil's not only right, he also was faster than me....

thanks.   I'm really slow today :unsure:. 

I don't see a rename button.  Is it more mysterious?  I'm in P7.0

Do I have to be in a specific room?

For each group.
Click "Add Material" to select the original material.
Click "Assign Material" to assign the seleced polygons to the new material.

Seems to me that will leave you with extra material groups eh?  Or is the group editor smart enough to make sure that polygons do not belong to multiple material zones?
edit: and will it leave an empty material zone?

Start over with stating your goal as it has been interpreted ambiguously.

Do you want to change the name of an existing material to a different name?

Or you want to change which materials are assigned to some polygons?

You asked how to rename a material group. There is no such thing as a material group. There are things we call materials, and there are things we call polygon groups, and the grouping tool will let you make polygons belong to different polygon groups, and will let you assign a material to a set of polygons. The grouping tool will also let you create a new material, but not to delete or rename a material.

Well, not to be overly nitpicky, but the term "material groups" as applied in this context is used throughout the Poser manual, so it seems clear to me what is meant. :)

In any case, what I would do (if I understand you right) is edit the pp2 / cr2 file and change the name of whatever material, and then edit the OBJ file (if there is one involved) and change the name there as well.  Search and replace does the trick, or if you use some high power poser file editor like Dimension3D's, they may have features bult in to do just this (Dimension3D's does).

By the way I just did a little test - creating a new group in the Group Editor and then assigning a material to that group IS smart enough to prevent polygons being assigned to multiple groups, but I don't know of a way to remove the old group strictly within Poser.  I'd just edit the files as I described previous post.

LOL I hear what you're saying. Nevertheless, the Poser manual is so bad, I'd hardly recommend it as a definition of anything in Poser.

For example, while searching through the manual for the phrase "material group", just so's I know what the manual claims on this subject, I encountered this beautifully incoherent and wrong statement in the second paragraph of Chapter 9: Lighting. (I bolded the insane part)

Lights can also help you create effects. For example, you could add a reflection map to an element in your scene, causing it to direct light back at the source. Please refer to the Poser Tutorial Manual, “Groups” for an explanation of material groups and to Part 4: “Materials” on page 301 for information on creating material shaders for your scene elements.

A reflection map has nothing to do with lighting, IMO, but here we find this lovely statement in the introduction to lights, telling us that on the subject of lights, you can add a reflection map to an element in your scene. Hmmm. Then the end of the sentence is mind blowing: causing it to direct light back at the source. Ha! HAHA! Nothing in Poser can direct light at anything except a light, and certainly not a reflection map.

So spare me the pointers to the manual, LOL. I just spent a couple days explaining to people at the Daz forum that they cannot use bounce diffusers in Poser to soften the lighting from a single light source. It's crap like this that confuses the hell out of people.

Hmmm - after seeing how many times the manual says "material group" instead of the simpler "material", I apologize and stand corrected.

I confess I've never read anything about materials in the manual. Believe it or not, it's true.

"The root Material node and root Hair nodes contain all of the attributes required to create
a complete shader for almost every material group in your scene (figures, props, hair)."

OK I'm the material guru, but I have to ask. What is a root Hair node? There is a root Material (PoserSurface) node, a root Light node, a root Atmosphere node, etc. There is no root Hair node. There is a Hair node but it isn't a root node.

Do I now have to accept that Poser has re-defined the term "root" in the context of an acyclic directed graph?

 BB, if you haven't bitten your tongue off yet over P8 maybe you can talk to the poser developers. I get the feeling you would like the ability to easily change the name of nodes. Maybe a friendly name for materials too wouldn't be a bad idea also for the "Material Groups" :) Lot easier then having to edit object files, etc. Have a prop I was messing around with where the material zones-groups where called something like #00031 to #00042. Took me a while to figure out which was which to get to the one I wanted to change. Once I figured them all out it would have nice if I could have changed a friendly name to leg, handles, desktop, etc. Sort of like how you can rename figures and lights friendly names.

Good idea, grichter. I'm certain something like that won't make it into P8 though.
 

Well BB you do software, I'm sure your acquainted with manuals whether written by developers - who automatically assume what they write is correct and clear - or by technical writers - who have the difficult job of writing instructions for processes they usually don't really understand, translated from the language of developers.  While the manual is certainly bad in lots of ways, you can't assume that a majority of people will just ignore it completely and go to third parties to learn how to use the application at hand.

edit: oops, at any rate, I was less concerned about what is the "correct term" and more concerned with what the original poster meant, which I hope has been addressed in a helpful way.

Quote - Start over with stating your goal as it has been interpreted ambiguously.

Do you want to change the name of an existing material to a different name?

Or you want to change which materials are assigned to some polygons?

You asked how to rename a material group. There is no such thing as a material group. There are things we call materials, and there are things we call polygon groups, and the grouping tool will let you make polygons belong to different polygon groups, and will let you assign a material to a set of polygons. The grouping tool will also let you create a new material, but not to delete or rename a material.

I want to change the name of an existing material to a different name.

I hope, without creating seams between the body parts.

It's one map for the whole figure. I uvmapped in Wings and created the bodypart groups in P7.0 setup room.

Thanks.

Quote - Well BB you do software, I'm sure your acquainted with manuals whether written by developers - who automatically assume what they write is correct and clear - or by technical writers - who have the difficult job of writing instructions for processes they usually don't really understand, translated from the language of developers.  While the manual is certainly bad in lots of ways, you can't assume that a majority of people will just ignore it completely and go to third parties to learn how to use the application at hand.

edit: oops, at any rate, I was less concerned about what is the "correct term" and more concerned with what the original poster meant, which I hope has been addressed in a helpful way.

Thanks.

It's a little detail, but it's good to know how to rectify without having to start over the setup process.  Made it through without a Poser crash, this time.

Maybe P8 will show a figure's material groups in the Heiarchy thingee.  the joy it would be.

Frankly if you're going to be doing any great amount of Poser content creation, especially rigging, you may want to give Dimension3D's CR2 editor a look, it saves enormous amounts of work compared to screwing around with a plain text editor.