Two questions - Clipping Mask and Change color in group

Question

Hello,
I have a file I rendered in Maya as a vector. I am not that great with illustrator, so I was trying to speed things up...
Anyway, it appears all the file have a Clipping Mask. If I unrelease it, it shows a plain with a similiar dimensions that is the original color of the object. See image for before and after...
Also, the same object says it is in a group. Because of that, I can't seem to change it's color, and the Ungroup button is greyed out... very confusing.
Jared

Answer 1

I rendered in Maya as a vector. I am not that great with illustrator, so I was trying to speed things up...
First, please forgive a little pet-peeve of mine:
You didn't render it as "a vector." A vector is a direction. You rendered it as vector-based artwork, which means it consists of [many] vector paths. I'm aware of the informal colloquialism, and I'm not just picking nits. The use of "a vector" as if in some corollary sense to "a raster image"--which I find so irritating--is misleading, especailly to newcomers.
When you refer to "a raster image", you are correctly referring to one object. When you refer to vector artwork, you are almost always referring to a collection of multiple vector-based paths, not a single object. And that is directly related to your current problem.
I assume there's a reason you need vector artwork. But you chose to have a 3D modelling program automatically render the model to vector artwork, hoping to shortcut a process while hoping to achieve the advantages inherent in vector artwork because, in your own words, you are "not that great with Illustrator." The example illustrates the self-defeating disadvantage of relying on automatic routines (much like the gross overuse of auto-tracing) to avoid having to know how to draw proper (and properly tidy) vector artwork. The end result is not the same.
Like auto-tracing, your auto-generated vector-based output is needlessly complex. This is particluarly poor practice for something intended to be used as base art for a corporate or product identity mark (logo). In a nutshell, it's sloppy.
That's why you find the results difficult to work with, and why responders to your post stumble in trying to advise you with specific step-by-step answers. The artwork very likely includes an unnecessary plethora of paths and multiple unnecessary constructs such as clipping paths and compound paths.
If this is intended to serve as an ongoing "master" vector version of an identity mark, imagine the similar difficulties that will be encountered by every downstream user. Yes, the artwork may be scaleable. But the results are not optimized for use as signage, or engraving, or screen printing, or spot-color printing, or a multitude of other uses assumed to be accommodated when someone pays for a proper piece of re-usable vector artwork.
So resorting to something like Maya's vector rendering for something like this, in hopes of avoiding what is really a rather modest learning curve, is quite often a false economy yielding sub-standard results from a technial standpoint.
It's a pity in this case, because the design itself is a good one. I don't know what your specific use is, but It probably deserves to be properly built.
To illustrate my point, below is an example from an earlier discussion. The top version was "automatically rendered as vector artwork" from Illustrator's own built-in 3D modeller. Yes, strictly speaking, it is "vector artwork." But its needless complexity practically negates most of the advantges that should be inherent in vector drawing. I would never have tried to pass it off as a finished "vector version" of someone's identity mark.
JET