Help please: how to "swap" one material for anothe

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi,

Is it possible to completely “swap” a material’s definition for another one?
For example, say I have a material called “Plain_Red” which is used in numerous objects to give a quick idea of a brick wall, at a later date I find a more accurate material called “Red_Brick” in a library somewhere and decide I want to use that. How could I swap “Plain_Red” for “Red_Brick”. I guess I’m l looking for a sort of global find and replace on material links?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

2

If the “Red_Brick” is in another blend, just Shift + F1 - fidn that blend, go to materials and middle mouse select it. Then go to where it says “Plain_Red” in your materials, hit the drop down button next to it and select “Red_Brick”

3

Just overwrite the material you want to swap out. You can use the material buttons to copy a materail (the little up arrow near the name) to a buffer. Copy the material you want to change to. Then go to the material you want to overwrite and paste it from the buffer (the little down arrow).

Since all object mats are linked and not individual, any object linked to that material should, when it changes, change with it.

4

Thanks all. Combination of Shift-L to import and then copy / paste works fine. The only (slight) downside is that the name of the copied into material may be slightly missleading (e.g. Plain_Red is now actually Red_Brick).