Share same material in different models

[milos.hlavacek]

Hello,

i have a huge model of a building divided into separate parts because i need more poeple to work on it at once. I make main renderings from a file, where i have all parts insterted as blocks.

I need to use same materials across all parts of model (wood, concrete, plaster etc.). Is there some workflow, that i have this material saved in one place only, yet allowing me to preview material while working on part of the model?

Until now I have had the same material saved in all blocks. When I changed the material I had to manually export this material, open all different blocks and replace the material. When opening the main model I choose"replace all existing materials".

I cannot have the material in main model only and use "use existing materials" because I would not be able to check texture mapping in parts of the model.

My idea is, is there a way to have material, which could be shared by multiple models? Somenting like that the material would automatically be exported when saving the model and would automatically be imported while opening?

Thanks for replies!

Miloš Hlaváček

[mgibeault]

There's a lot of people with more or less the same problem...
It would be nice to have a robust workflow for this situation. I think the solution would be a material that stays "external" to the file and read-only when needed (cannot be overwritten when opening or importing a file with the same material name)