Workflow for adding creating a new material while working in geometry nodes

Question

The following keeps happening to me: I'm working in geometry nodes, I end up with something that looks cool, and then I decide to make a material for it.

So I add a "set material node" ... but it only lets me select from existing materials. So to create a new one, I have to create a dummy object object, add a new material to it, hide the dummy object and then go back into geometry nodes so I can select the material. After that I have to keep switching to the dummy object in order to edit the material.

This seems not very optimal, so I'm wondering if there's a better workflow. What's a good way to create and assign a new material while working on procedural geometry?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you need to assign the material to some object in order to edit it. But what I usually do is add the material to the object using the geonodes modifier. You still need to assign that material inside geonodes if you generate new geometry (or join with old geometry and set material index), but you don't need a separate object.