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Let me set this question up a bit to establish why you would even WANT to do this.

When exporting from DAZ to Blender, I use the Diffeomorphic plugin and the Sagan Alembic plugin.

Say I port a Genesis 8 female from DAZ to Blender using diffeo. Now in DAZ I pose the model and use Sagan to port the posed models. The sagan alembic exporter is now supposed to export the geometry, UVs and faces of the mesh by itself, using the diffeo in the host blender file to get it's materials. Sagan reliably exports geometry, UVs and faces. However sometimes it screws up on the materials and puts them in the wrong places.

My idea was to simply link the materials manually- but then I found another issue. Apparently, something in the albemic system organizes the materials on a mesh by name. This doesn't appear to cause any problems on the surface, but if you want to just link the materials say- between the alembic model and the model imported through diffeomorphic- since they're in different orders- the alembic model now look like trash as the materials are assigned to the wrong places.

So I experimented. What if I took "arms" and manually put it at the top of the list? Lo and behold- the arms material can now link properly.

So then- is there a way to alphabetize the materials on a mesh? There doesn't seem to be a reason not to and if you had enough you might want to do so- how would you?

BTW, anyone working with these two programs- this looks like it might be a work around to make them work properly.

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    $\begingroup$ The materials, what you can see in the Material properties tab are just slots with an index. You don't have to assign a material (shader) to them, or you can use the same material (shader) to multiple slots. They are recognized by an index number, which property appears in some modifier or shader/geomerty node. So in the basic software I don't think this is possible, maybe a script or an addon can reassign them. $\endgroup$
    – FFeller
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:28
  • $\begingroup$ The simpliest solution if you add serial numbers before the materials name, so they will be in alphabetic order. $\endgroup$
    – FFeller
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:37
  • $\begingroup$ I'm not sure what you mean by that. $\endgroup$
    – Zack Hound
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:44
  • $\begingroup$ If you look at the materials list for a model in Blender, there ARE up and down buttons on the right that do indeed change the order of the materials, which apparently can affect the process of linking materials directly between meshes. I'm just asking if there's a quick way to aphabatize them. $\endgroup$
    – Zack Hound
    Commented Jul 25, 2022 at 16:47

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