I would like to know how I can export a material to let a friend use, without sending them a huge .blend file just to append the material from.
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$\begingroup$ Couldn't you just append the material into a new .blend and send them that? $\endgroup$– gandalf3Commented Oct 5, 2014 at 0:30
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3 Answers
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While its possible to invent some file-format to store Blender materials, this is currently not a common way to share materials.
Typically for this would be done by appending materials into a new Blend file, saving it, and sending this to a 3rd party.
In rare cases a material may depend on objects (using empties for mapping), in those cases you could create a group of objects in your Blend file and append that instead of the materials (the materials will load in too).
answered Oct 5, 2014 at 8:47
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There is one option for cycles materials - Online Material Library. It is in the contrib addons that is normally included with non-release builds.
Primarily this addon provides access to a collection of materials but also has tools to import/export cycles node based materials to an xml-based text file that can easily be shared. While there was mention of adding support for BI materials there hasn't been any support added for them.
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What you could do is put the material on a cube in the original file. Maybe pack the file if it includes images. Then copy-paste the cube to an empty blend file and share this. I think this would be about the minimal space requirement.
answered Oct 29, 2014 at 10:46