>> Yup, that is the idea as well...

Great.

Mapping groups and stuff sounds cool too. I wonder how modo will handle it (I don't actually have Lightwave so only interested in this as a means of getting data from MoI to modo).

modo has a concept of polygon tags. Select a bunch of poly and assign a tag to them. This can then be used to map materials to specific polys. This looks like how the 'surface' assignment is translated. Makes sense to have style mapped to this.

modo then has mesh items which look like they matche with the 'layer' concept. At the moment each object in MoI comes over as a new mesh item called obj1, obj2, etc. A mesh item is just a group of polys, connected or unconnected. Polys can be cut and pasted between mesh items and the mesh items can be turned on/off, grouped or instanced. They are displayed like layers in the item list, along with other objects.


So I think you are right that the layer is the closest thing to a single object. Proof is in the eating of course :-)