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I need to import alembics in my scene and I would like to do a lots of updates of this object without losing my materials (& other datas). For example, I have a main scene, I import an alembic, do some shading. Then, each time I modify the alembic, I need to re-assign the materials (or animation or modifiers).

I already tried to put the alembic in another file, link it and adding a library overide. It keeps my modifiers but not the materials.

I need to solve this problem because It is an important part of my worflow and I will have to work with differents peoples & we need to find a way to update easily the datas.

Do you have an idea ?

Thanks

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    $\begingroup$ I figured out that you were talking about editing the original alembic file, then re-importing it. Have you tried messing around with the content of the material slots to just switch materials easily? $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Mar 2, 2021 at 17:47
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, sorry if it wasn't clear. I need to edit and import again my alembics without loosing the materials assignements, modifiers & positions. I tried to link a blender file with an embed Alembic but it doesn't work for the materials unfortunately. $\endgroup$
    – Stef
    Mar 3, 2021 at 19:03
  • $\begingroup$ Have you tried attaching the material slots to the object data block and then re-importing the alembic but keeping the old object and changing it to use the new mesh data block? $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Mar 3, 2021 at 20:45
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the tip, I didn't think about this (I never used Data blocks yet). I changed the datablock in the Object Property/Browse mesh data. The mesh changes well but I lose the shading properties. $\endgroup$
    – Stef
    Mar 5, 2021 at 14:32
  • $\begingroup$ OK, in the materials tab, there’s a little setting for each material slot whether it links the slot to the object data or the mesh data. I haven’t played with this very much, but it might help you. I’m more just telling you something to experiment with here. $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Mar 5, 2021 at 14:39

2 Answers 2

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I'm not an expert, but one option would be to re-link the materials by using Ctrl+L > Link Materials

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The fastest way I found was to move the original alembic, close the project and reopen it, then you get an error.

Then you only need to update the file location of one object and all the other objects that have the same error will be updated as well.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, it will help on my actual project. $\endgroup$
    – Stef
    Nov 10, 2022 at 8:53

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