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The C4D command "Removed Unused Materials" removes all scene materials that are used as components of a mixed material, if these same materials are used for mix materials only. If a mix material component is directly assigned to a mesh, then the material is not deleted when the Remove Unused Materials command is used.

Cinema has no way to know if a material that is a sub-component of another material is actually used by another Octane material. Is there some way for Octane to flag these materials as active, even if they are not directly assigned?

Look to Octane's Remove Unused Materials command.

Understood, but the issue that I have is somewhat different: this asset started with the intention to render in Cinema, and as such had Cinema materials. Next, I had migrated the asset into Arnold, and I was going to render with that. Through some online prompting, I was urged to try Octane, and gradually got the materials (mainly skin and hair) to the point to where I was happy (it didn't take too long). Ultimately, I have decided to render this entire project with Octane, but as a result, I have quite a bit of a materials mess on my hands, which is why I tried the Cinema command (a natural workflow). The fact that the command removed valuable material components was something I didn't realize until just before I wrote that message earlier today. It turns out this has been vexing me for a few days prior, as I did not initially catch the problem.

I appreciate that there is an Octane-supplied method to remove unused Octane materials, but as you can see above, that is not what I was trying to do, and I consider the current behavior as described a bug, and I suspect that most Cinema users would have the same opinion.

I am sure that Maxon would work with you to upgrade the SDK at some point down the line to allow you to correctly handle this case, or perhaps there is already a methodology for doing so.

I see but i can't call it as a "BUG". Bug is unexpected behaviour or some crash on codes. On Maxon's side, i'm not sure what they think about a better material system(nodes). Year is 2015, next version is R17. Only big software without support for a node system.

Also there is very interesting thing in C4D structure. It's nearly ready to support this system. Think that i could wrote a Node Editor after a few fails. Took about one year to find a stable method. In short, C4D's some functions ignores some required connections to make us happy. Like connection to other materials from some slots.

I would like to see more close support to improve things. We can ask and get some answers and helps via developer forums. That's very good but not perfect. Also we still have some missing things which requires a solution. Ex: Arnold could provide final output of hair rendering in IPR window but i couldn't found a proper way. That's a sample for situation.

Could this be a quick fix implemented in future updates? This issue always gets me and I have to go back to the original scene and find all my materials for my mixes. It seems like it would be a very easy fix to add an exception for mix materials