Global material type change for selected objects..

[sloanelliot]

This is an interesting one that may or may not be of use to a LOT of people (as always, please tell me if you can think of a workaround, ha):

This came to mind when dealing with a scene where I have about 100 or so tiny bits of chocolate, cereal, milk splashes, etc. It's not uncommon to do a complete scene setup and realize, "You know, I could get more control over this material if I switched it from plastic over to ____" (Advanced, for example). Of course, if all of these parts shared the same material maps I could just link them and switch them all at once. But, the problem arises when each material has its own separate normal, diffuse, specular and displacement maps associated with it (every piece of cereal, chocolate, etc. is one of a kind, after all). Right now, the only solution is the tedious one-part-at-a-time approach, but it also seems logical that the TYPE of material for set of objects could be changed based on a selection set vs. singular part. It could even be something as simple as a right-click sub-menu that allows you to swap material type for your entire selection set, and preserve maps/nodes that are still compatible with the new chosen material type (and discard / set aside what's incompatible, just as it does now via the materail type drop-down). An alternative solution would be to have the ability to "Link material type..." in the context menu?

This dilemma isn't as rare as you'd think. Sometimes you have countless metal parts with the same finish but all with their own respective maps/displacements/labels/etc. and maybe you want to take it from a standard metal to anisotropic but preserve your work. Or say you have a massive pile of diffuse rocks from a previous project that you'd now like to use as, say, crushed ice (material type: glass, solid) ... or chunks of chocolate (material type: advanced). Each rock has it's own unique set of maps that would still be required for chocolate, ice, etc. (normal/displace/etc.), and currently, the only option is to either link them and do a global material change and manually reinsert maps, or (tediously) change material type one-by-one..

Or am I missing something? (haha)