I'm working on a scene where I have a figure exported as objs in different poses and want to import them into Blender for the same scene. I'd like them to share the same shaders so if I change them with one figure, they'll be changed for all of them. But when I import the second and third figures into Blender, it changes the names of the materials for them by adding a number at the back. Is it possible to stop blender from doing this? Or is there a way to copy the names for the materials to the new figures without having to do each individually?

Blender ships with an addon called Material Utilities. It is not enabled by default, so you just need to go to preferences and turn it on. Shift Q brings up its menu and the documentation link is available via preferences. There is a function called Copy Materials to Selected that might be what you're looking for. I just gave it a quick test and it seems to work OK.

And yes, Blender appending numbers to everything is a royal pain in the proverbial.

The Material Utilities add-on is one option but it is still in beta most the functions work but might still have to tweak there is also the Copy Attributes Menu which is another add-on that is not turned on by default but has to ability to copy multiple attributes from mesh to another and I think it does include the ability to copy the materials from one mesh to another 

Thanks. I'll check those out

In Blender: press F3. Type "batch". Select "Edit -> Batch Rename..." and this will pop up:

I should have remembered this earlier. You can't prevent Blender from adding the numerical suffixes. Each object and material must have a unique name, otherwise the suffixes will be appended when encountering an object or material with an identical name. Sure, you can copy materials from one object or a select number of polys to other geometry, but the names must remain unique. It's like to trying to have two files with the same name in the same directory. If that was allowed to happen, neither Blender or you would know what was what.

Another solution would be to mark the materials as assets and reapply them to the other objs. It would take more time to do it like that. On the other hand you can save the blend file with your materials , link it as an asset library in the preferences and then pull your materials for another scene from the asset browser. It's not as seamless as Poser or DAZ but could be pretty convenient.

I'm still learning how to use assets. It's something I haven't wrapped my head around yet.

I ended up just manually swapping out the materials.

Just reading this thread and felt to cold shower of being left way behind. In the past, I would simply script shaders in Python. Worked for Poser AND Blender. Still have Poser 11 and was thinking of scripting a quick-n-dirty skin shader and - horror of horrors - come to realise that Superfly and Firefly are two different critters. And whilst Blender has 80 Cycles nodes, Poser only has some 60-odd of them. 

Otherwise I'd give you a quick solution you could run in Python, Red. Unfortunately, in my absence, they've moved the cheese. 🤨

RobynsVeil posted at 7:15 AM Sat, 3 June 2023 - #4467024

Just reading this thread and felt to cold shower of being left way behind. In the past, I would simply script shaders in Python. Worked for Poser AND Blender. Still have Poser 11 and was thinking of scripting a quick-n-dirty skin shader and - horror of horrors - come to realise that Superfly and Firefly are two different critters. And whilst Blender has 80 Cycles nodes, Poser only has some 60-odd of them. 

Otherwise I'd give you a quick solution you could run in Python, Red. Unfortunately, in my absence, they've moved the cheese. 🤨

Nice to see you chime in Robyn long time no see I am sure if you get back up on the horse you will catch up quickly just totally have confidence in you catching up with ease :smiley:

That's very nice of you, Lobo.  🙂  Thank you!

As I'm now retired and on a fixed income, upgrading to the latest versions of paid-for software is no longer an option, whether for videography, image creation or composition. It's a matter of "use what you have" and I've yet learned even a fraction of what I want to about Blender (and composition). Because of the fixed-income thing, I won't be upgrading Poser. Blender, on the other hand, will allow scripting shaders, and it's likely where I'd be doing all rendering anyway, so no reason to stay on an older version. 

This Blender forum always has useful posts offering sound suggestions. Added benefit: the tone is always respectful here.

RobynsVeil posted at 5:50 PM Sat, 3 June 2023 - #4467064

That's very nice of you, Lobo.  🙂  Thank you!

As I'm now retired and on a fixed income, upgrading to the latest versions of paid-for software is no longer an option, whether for videography, image creation or composition. It's a matter of "use what you have" and I've yet learned even a fraction of what I want to about Blender (and composition). Because of the fixed-income thing, I won't be upgrading Poser. Blender, on the other hand, will allow scripting shaders, and it's likely where I'd be doing all rendering anyway, so no reason to stay on an older version. 

This Blender forum always has useful posts offering sound suggestions. Added benefit: the tone is always respectful here.

It is always good to see you Robyn I have been thinking about learning some Python coding to maybe try developing add-on for Blender but I have not done any serious program in decades last programing I did was in Pascal and C+ and some visual basic not sure this old dog can learn new tricks but it is something sort of floating around in the cobwebs which I am sure you will get the meaning. 

RobynsVeil posted at 5:50 PM Sat, 3 June 2023 - #4467064

  🙂  

Totally off topic....

Robyn is back !! 

shvrdavid posted at 12:38 PM Tue, 13 June 2023 - #4467811

RobynsVeil posted at 5:50 PM Sat, 3 June 2023 - #4467064

  🙂  

Totally off topic....

Robyn is back !! 

It is great to see Robyn back if I am not mistaken Robyn is one of the first members I met when I started following this forum she is truly a wealth of information :smiley: