Thanks for the reply -
Yes i tested all the AwayBuilder releases and the alpha release is the only one that applied the materials to the mesh in the viewport. All later releases just map a default checkerboard.
Ive used Maya 7 & Maya 2013 to export the obj/mtl files and tried different models/materials as well with the same results.
AwayBuilder must be reading the mtl file to some degree, because in all AwayBuilder versions the textures & texture paths show up in the texturelist - so *that* works, but the material list is always empty and as a result the checkerboard is applied to the models in the viewport. So it seems there is something going wrong with the material creation.
All the materials I created in Maya are basic lambert with a png texture in the diffuse color slot. I tried blinn materials as well; also tried jpg as well, all give the same result.
Thanks,
beers