Material Replacer - Blender Addon

Batch replace all materials in a scene (IE: mat.001 -> mat)

Scenario:

You are working with a team on a 3D character model. There is a master character file (A) but other team members need to copy it (B) and adjust materials.. After file B has been adjusted, the materials are appended into file A to be combined. You want to retain all data in file A but just change the materials from file B. The old material in file A could look like "mat_body" but the newly appended material is "mat_body.001". It is possible to manually re-assign the materials and rename them.. but that takes an enormous amount of time depending on the number of materials and project size. How does it scale? How do we reduce redundancies and automate this problem?

^ This is what Material Replacer aims to solve!

HOW TO USE:

From another Blender file, append a set of materials with the same name into your current Blender file. Then use the replace button in the right-side tool window. ("CTRL + N" in 3D View)

UPDATE LOG:

23-10-16 v1.4.1

• Cleaned up codebase and files: re-organized file structure to more adhere to addon guidelines
• Material Hide & Restore buttons will enable/disable when the opposite button has been selected; allowing for easier readability of the User Interface

23-10-19 v1.4

• *Hide and Restore Materials on Objects: Will remove all materials from all objects while keeping those connections. This frees up memory on the 3D viewport for faster loading and draw times. Ability to restore the materials to their objects from the connections created in the 'HIDE' process. Great for sharing files between team members and preparation for rendering.

23-09-02 v1.3

• *Updated Remove Duplicates Function: Removes all duplicate materials from objects and the blender file and re-assigns the original material if it exists.

23-08-30 v1.2

• Remove Duplicates Function: Remove all duplicate materials (mat.001, mat.002, mat.003...)

23-08-27 v1.1

• Inverse Function
• Notification when a new update is available (requires an internet connection)