Blender Material Duplicates Consolidator

A Blender addon that consolidates duplicate materials (e.g., Material.001, Material.002, Glass.004) back to their base materials within a collection.

Problem It Solves

When you copy and paste objects in Blender, it often creates duplicate materials with .001, .002, .003 suffixes. This addon automatically consolidates all these duplicates back to the base material name.

Example:

• Door/Shutter.004 → Door/Shutter
• Glass.004 → Glass
• Material.001 → Material

Features

• Works on entire collections at once
• Automatically finds and replaces duplicate materials
• Preserves the base material if it exists
• If no base material exists, renames the first duplicate to be the base
• User-friendly UI in the 3D View sidebar
• Reports how many materials were consolidated

Installation

Method 1: Install from ZIP

1. Download or create a ZIP file containing __init__.py
2. In Blender, go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons
3. Click Install... button
4. Navigate to the ZIP file and select it
5. Enable the addon by checking the checkbox next to "Material: Material Duplicates Consolidator"

Method 2: Install Manually

1. Locate your Blender addons folder:
   • Windows: C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\[Version]\scripts\addons\
   • macOS: /Users/[YourUsername]/Library/Application Support/Blender/[Version]/scripts/addons/
   • Linux: ~/.config/blender/[Version]/scripts/addons/
2. Create a folder called BlenderMaterialDups
3. Copy __init__.py into this folder
4. Restart Blender or click Refresh in Preferences → Add-ons
5. Enable the addon by searching for "Material Duplicates Consolidator" and checking the checkbox

Usage

1. Open the 3D View in Blender
2. Press N to open the sidebar (if not already open)
3. Click on the "Materials" tab
4. Select a collection from the dropdown menu
5. Click the "Consolidate Material Duplicates" button

The addon will process all objects in the selected collection and consolidate any duplicate materials.

How It Works

1. The addon scans all objects in the selected collection
2. For each material slot on each object:
   • Checks if the material name ends with .### (three digits)
   • Extracts the base material name
   • Looks for the base material in the Blender file
   • If found, replaces the duplicate with the base material
   • If not found, renames the duplicate to become the base material
3. Reports the results in Blender's status bar

Requirements

• Blender 3.0 or higher

Support

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please report them at the project repository.

License

This addon is provided as-is for use in Blender projects.