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I have a complex shape with many materials assigned to it so I can't just easily pick faces to those to apply this material, so how do I reduce 3 slots that have the exact same material into one slot on one shape?

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    $\begingroup$ You will have to learn to work with UV unwrap and create mask for complex material $\endgroup$
    – hawkenfox
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 5:07
  • $\begingroup$ There are no UV maps on this shape. $\endgroup$
    – Eric Huelin
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 5:17
  • $\begingroup$ you will have to create one. $\endgroup$
    – hawkenfox
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 8:03
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    $\begingroup$ if your materials are duplicates with .001, .002 extensions, then you can enable the addon Materials Utils Specials and then open the specials menu (arrow down icon next to material slots) and go to Specials -> Merge Base Names $\endgroup$
    – Jan Kadeřábek
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 16:19

3 Answers 3

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As far as I know there is no automatic way to merge material slots in one single step, you can however easily select all faces with a certain material applied and assing any other material to them.

Say you have material A, B and C and want to have only A and B. In the Properties Window > Materials select material slot A and press the Select button below, then select material slot B and click the Assign button, and you will have technically 'merged' both slots.

You can now delete material slot C by selecting it and pressing the [-] button to the right.

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    $\begingroup$ You can select faces that have a certain material. That was the part I didn't know that Blender has as an option. Thanks Duarte $\endgroup$
    – Eric Huelin
    Commented Feb 18, 2016 at 21:55
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There is now way how to merge materials to make some kind of new mixed material. But often an imported model can contain many duplicates of the same material with extensions like .001, .002 etc. - if this is your case, you can try this:

  • Enable Materials Utils

    enter image description here

  • Navigate to object's materials tab and go to Material Specials Menu -> Specials -> Merge Base Names

    enter image description here

  • Alternatively, you can try luck with enabling another built-in addon called Datablock Tools and go to Object -> Datablock Tools -> Clean Materials Datablock

    enter image description here

Hopefully some of the methods will work for you.

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Merge materials in 3 easy steps.

This is your materials list:

  • RED
  • GREEN
  • BLUE

If you want to make all that's BLUE to be RED.
1) Select the BLUE material.
2) Use the up arrow till the BLUE is under the RED.
3) Delete the BLUE by using the minus button.
Done!
Now all that was BLUE is now RED.

The way Blender behaves if you delete a material all the material that used that slot will inherit the slot above unless it is the top slot then it will inherit the one below.

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