OK, so I'm sick of guessing or not knowing or whatever- I can't be the only one!!! Does anyone know exactly what the 'Preview' tab in the Surfice Material, Material dropdown is? I've tried to figure it out by my self but can't. So tell me: Whatsit for?????

I do not know? Sharen

It seems to be a default material that is created in the object, unused my most, but a few will forget to rename it when assigning it to a part, like in the Poser baby it is the hip with genitals turned off. So you never really know what it is assigned to or if it is at all.

Actually if you have your settings set to box tracking mode you'll see a box for every group. This is what the preview shows. It also shows in Fast tracking but only when you are moving your object, figure, etc. If you use full tracking mode only you wouldn't actually see it anywhere. You can select the various tracking modes from right next to your preview window. I only stumbled onto this myself because I had inadvertently assigned tranparency to the preview and whenever I moved I got those transparent dots!

Hmmm, are you referring to where it says preview, usually at the end of a list of materials for a figure or prop? If you change it's color, you will notice that the bounding box mode for that object will have the color you changed it to. If you map something, but don't specify materials, the default is preview and it will be the only material listed. It's a filler mostly, so that the program isn't left hanging at those times when you haven't specified material regions when mapping a poser figure's obj. It'll also change the color of an object that hasn't been uv mapped at all yet. It's the material default that poser falls back on if no other mapping information has been supplied for a given object.

Also, BTW, if you delete the Preview material from the CR2 it gets recreated as soon as you open it, automatically, even if not needed. You always have a Preview material.

I don't see any/many tabs at all in Poser. It makes me wondering if we have the same program?! What I see are buttons.

I'll use this image from Internet Explorer's Internet Options to illustrate the difference between tabs and buttons. In order to visualize the difference, think of a filing cabinet, and file folders. Folders have tabs so you can find the folders easily in the drawer. Buttons are like doorbell buttons. You see them, push them, etc.

Yeah, calling them tabs confused me a bit too, but I got what was meant by the question, I think. Anyway, let us know if this was helpful to you, ArmoredGideon.