Is there anything I can do to workaround this? Its super annoying when reusing same geometry you end up with tens of duplicate materials. I know there is a way to mass reassign and merge those back but its like always once in a while I miss and spot in unreal object with same material assigned multiple times… Would be nice to have option for using the existing material instead of duplicating it…
Hi,
Some food for thought about this one:
Just use Shift+D instead of Ctrl+C
Or, you can use the so-called “Duplicate Linked” function. Just select your object that you want to duplicate n-times and press Alt+D, it will copy all of its data from the parent object, including material, dimensions and so on, but bear mind that in that case you will be able to edit only the PARENT object, and all changes that you would bring to the parent object, will automatically be applied to the child ones.
More about Duplicated Linked objects written here:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/scene_layout/object/editing/duplicate_linked.html
Shift + D makes duplicate. Alt + D is the only one which does not but then you need to make single user still. I think its a bit over complicated for such a simple action. I dont see any situation where it would be actually useful to have the duplicated material as well. Just makes the material list go crazy if you dont keep eye on it.
That’s the way Blender was made.
That’s the thing with those things where are multiple ways possible… the “default” is always something which someone do not want 
HMMM I just checked Blender 4.0, 3.5, 3.6 and 2.79 (all versions I have), none of them duplicated the material with shift D.
All Linux builds and I did not change defaults.
Wow, so there is setting, awesome! This fixes it, maybe I had it turned on by accident if its not on by default 
