Disable Material Duplication

Question

Anyone who has used Blender for a while has probably tried to duplicate a scene via Full Copy. They would have then found that in the duplicated scene, all of the materials were duplicated as well, receiving that infuriating .001 ending. Normally, one might be able to change all the materials back to the originals and then reload the file (as suggested here) to get rid of the duplicate materials. I can do this, but I have A LOT of material slots in my project, and the work is incredibly boring.

So basically, my question is...

Is there a button, script, feature, or anything else that would disable the duplication of materials when I duplicate my scene.

Note that if the answer is a script, I will need to be walked through how to use it as my Python skills are about a -52. :)

Answer 1

You can run this script to replace all duplicated materials in your file. Just paste it into the Text editor and click the Run Script button.

It searches all objects, and then compares the first part of the material name (the part before the .001 suffix) with any materials named the same, and if a match is found replaces the object material with the matched material.

The idea would be to do a Full Scene copy and then run this script to remove all material duplicates.

import bpy
mats = bpy.data.materials

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    for slt in obj.material_slots:
        part = slt.name.rpartition('.')
        if part[2].isnumeric() and part[0] in mats:
            slt.material = mats.get(part[0])

Before running the script, make sure your materials are named properly. Any material that ends with .001, .002 or 003, will be replaced by its "original version".

Credit for script goes to user liero on this BlenderArtist.org page

Ctrl + Shift + O finishes the job by reloading the file.

Answer 2

The following Add-on creates an empty scene, duplicates all objects and links them to the new one without duplicating the materials of the objects:

Click to enlarge

Once it's enabled, hit Spacebar in 3D View and run 'Duplicate Scene'. Notice that it's a copy of the scene objects only, render and world settings are default.

---

custom-scene-duplicator.py

bl_info = {
    "name": "Duplicate Scene",
    "description": "",
    "author": "poor",
    "version": (0, 0, 1),
    "blender": (2, 70, 0),
    "location": "3D View > Spacebar > Duplicate Scene",
    "category": "3D View"
}

import bpy

def dupeObj(ob, scn):
    ob_copy = ob.copy()
    ob_data = ob.data.copy()
    ob_copy.data = ob_data
    scn.objects.link(ob_copy)
    scn.objects.active = ob_copy

class CustomDuplicateSceneOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Duplicate all objects in the scene without material duplication"""
    bl_idname = "view3d.duplicate_scene"
    bl_label = "Duplicate Scene"
    bl_options = {'REGISTER', 'UNDO'}

    def execute(self, context):

        # current scene
        orig_scene = context.scene.name
        bpy.ops.scene.new(type='NEW')

        # get the new scene
        new_scene = bpy.context.scene
        for ob in bpy.data.scenes[orig_scene].objects:
            dupeObj(ob, new_scene)

        self.report({'INFO'}, "Scene duplicated to {}".format(new_scene.name))
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(CustomDuplicateSceneOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(CustomDuplicateSceneOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Install the Add-on via File > User Preferences > Add-ons > Install from File.

Answer 3

Wouldn't this be as simple as just using the New Scene > Link Objects New Scene > Link Object Data?

You can then select all objects and press U Make Single User > Object or Make Single User > Object and Data and you will have virtually duplicated your scene with all new objects with independent object data, but maintaining the same materials.

Only caveat is that if you have object instances inside the same scene their relationships will also be lost when making a single user.

You could work around this by selecting all objects with the same object data using Shift + L Select Linked > Object Data, making sure one of them is the active object, then making single user of the active object, then linking all of them back to the new one with Ctrl + L Link > Object Data

Answer 4

A very simple tip to clean a scene from all its materials and orphan chunks, is to export in wavefront format (.obj). As a result, you will get two files. Obj file contains your objects with very few differences from blender except you loose modifiers. For example, if a subsurf modifier is active while you export, the object will be saved with subsurf applied. Arrays, wireframe or lattice are definitely applied to .obj objects.

The other file (.mtl) contains all materials (with their dependant textures). Erase or remame it and re_import .obj in a blank blender environment. All undesired chunks are cleaned from the new blend file.

It may be usefull when migrating a scene to Cycles Render or if your blend is full of orphan chunks (memory leaks) that didn't be erased when their parent reference been suppressed.

Hope it helps