Multiple material copies merger

Question

I'm looking for a way to merge same materials. I have archviz projects and I'm importing stuff from 3ds max. Problem is that materials are mess. After Import hundreds of objects to blender I got thousands of materials, but problem is that they are copy of themselves and it looks like that:

ANYNAME.001 ANYNAME.002 ANYNAME.003 .... ANYNAME.099

And I want to make sth like - Check object name if its the same but only difference in name is this .001 .002 etc change every copy of material for every object with material that is .001

This is problem 1, problem 2 is:

I have material called Metal_black, and I have this ANYNAME.001 - is there a way to change material to every object that have ANYNAME.001 to Metal_black (I mean without copying material nodes into ANYNAME.001 but changing every ANYNAME.001 to Metal_black).

Is there plugin or is here a good soul who could help me with that, .py script would really help.

Answer 1

Question 1

Just pick one of your materials, rename it accordingly. Then pick all objects who should have the same material where the last one in selection is the object with your renamed material. Hit Ctrl - L and pick "materials" This replaces all materials with the last one.

Question 2

Every object can have multiple material slots (1) with names and these slots can pickup the actual material (3). In Blender it is possible to rename the slot and/or replace the content (material) of the slot.

To do so just go to the material properties panel and select the material you wish to assign (4). Notice that if you look at the info row (2) you can see how often a material is used and also make sure does not get deleted, if it is nowhere assigned.