I ended up with white models also. When I checked the egg files I found that the models that turned up white, were exported without RGBA values in the polygon fields.
I thought about it and then made sure that before I exported said models I converted to mesh (you guys didn’t mention that, so that one might be overkill) and collapsed (which you did mention) them. This caused the models to show up pretty much the way they did in max(7).
Heads up FYI, is all.
S.E.