I've been following this tutorial and I'm trying to see if importing a group will work. I grouped two objects to test, set a temporary texture as the base and set up a proxy material, then copied the group and assigned the base to the original and the proxy to the copy, created a dummy and linked the base to the dummy and the proxy to the base. I tried to export the dummy and the texture, but I'm still getting the "replace me" text on my group and the textures aren't showing up in the material editor (that is, they're there, but for some reason it won't show the preview of the material in the box). When I try manually assigning the texture, it still doesn't work.
These are screen grabs of Max and CE3 (v3.3.9)

Make sure the mtl and your max file are in the same folder. If not, do a synchronization of the material path into max from the crymaxtool panel.

Also make sure your working folders are located into the game structure.

Yeah, all that checks out. Everything is under Game>Objects>TestStatue

The group imports fine, as a single object, but the texture for some reason won't import, it just keeps giving "replace me"...

EDIT: Ok, I'm going to try and download 3.4.0 and see if that helps. Will I have to remove 3.3.9, or will will it just replace the previous version automatically?

Downloaded 3.4.0 and it seemed to import my mesh and textures correctly on a test cube, but when I tried to import a bigger model with a bunch of different objects (a chunk from my senior project), it gave me an error saying I had X number of degernerate faces. When I clicked "turn into editable mesh" it said it couldn't do that. So the mesh just flat out won't export. I looked it up and it seems like I'm supposed to delete the degenerate faces after it becomes an editable mesh, but like I said it won't even apply and editable mesh. Any ideas? This project is due in about two weeks and need to make sure I can get it in the engine before then

Degenerate faces is often the result of a not good enough model topology for the exporter. It happens when you have edges being overlayed and verts that are unwelded.

You'll want to make sure to use the 'turn' feature of the editable poly mode to make sure you don't have any double edges hidden.

There can be other reasons but those are the two main ones you'll get when model isn't clean enough.

How can I tell if there are overlaid edges or unwelded verts?

Ok, I went into EditPoly and selected all the vertices and clicked weld, and that seemed to work- my mesh is in CryEngine successfully now.

But my materials are still a bit off- I import the material and try to apply it, but it either gives me the "Replace Me" text or makes my object invisible. Plus, the materials aren't showing up as samples in the sample slots...
Oh yeah, and my proxy is not giving a proper collision field (I can still walk straight through my object). Everything is set up right though, it's a Crytek Shader with physicalize checked and "physical proxy (no draw)" selected.

Did you apply the correct Material ID's to the faces of the object and try deleteing the mesh and then hitting ctrl-z to bring it back. Sometimes it works with the colission. However if thats not working you might have not set it up properly. Is it named correctly ? does it have a user defined "box" or "cylinder" in the object properties ?

Mat ID's are correct
I'll try the delete thing
Following the tutorial I was using, a physics proxy should be named $physics_proxy_something, which is what I did.
Do the user-defined properties have to a be a box or a cylinder? I just set the user-defined properties as "side-tubes" (I copied the actual object and applied the proxy material to that.)
Should I restrict the collision boundaries to boxes and cylinders?

The correct UDPs for proxies are these:

• box
• cylinder
• capsule
• sphere

Leave no UDP if your collision mesh is a mesh.

http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/UDP+Settings

Ok, yeah it's a mesh (like I said, I just copied the group to use as proxy), so I left it blank