I sometimes want to render scenes in different ways, for example having a scene that is pristine and as new and another where objects are tired and worn. Or, perhaps more straightforwardly, one where the car is red with chrome detail and tan leather and another where it is blue with black detail and leather. Or take a scene previously rendered in Cycles and try a Bella Render taking advantage of the latter’s materials.
I think it would be great if we could could keep sets of materials for a model and choose which set to use for a render. There would need to be tools to manage the sets - for example cloning a set as the basis for a new one, or identifying where a particular material was used. Sets would need to encompass sub-components such as textures, height maps etc.
Sets could be much easier to manage than the only current approach of saving multiple copies of models, particularly when it came to modifying the model uniformly across render variants.
Is this something others would find helpful?
Regards
Jeremy