I have a freelance product rendering job that requires something like 17 different flavors of the same model. I want to animate the model and have the animation, scale, transform, everything BUT the material link. That way if the animation changes, I do not have to change the animation 17 different times but I can still change the labels of the 17 different flavors.
Yep. On your original object, change your material in the properties section to object instead of data. Now animate your thing. Now when you link your scene, chose link objects. You will have the original and the copies with everything but material. You can now just changed the material on each object as you want. You will still have the animation of the original on each linked object for rendering.
Ok try this. Link in your object as normal. Then Make Proxy of it. You should be able to add material as an object instead of data and delete the original material.
Will that work for you?