I'm working on a new vehicle mod almost entirely from scratch, so I split and prepped a model in MAX and exported it as a .OBJ and .MTL file (Blender won't read DAEs created in Max for some reason). Before I exported the model as combined parts with multiple materials, I mapped each single-material object to its corresponding texture before merging them into parts like the doors, hood, etc. When I go to name the materials in Blender to correspond with the materials.cs file, each material in each body part is named with just a string of numbers, and even parts that shared the same material and texture in Max are seen as totally independent materials. Usually when I work with an existing model to edit materials and I rename one, the name changes globally so I don't have to individually go through each part and guess which number corresponds to which material on the object. What I'm looking to find out is how can I make it so all materials that share one texture are linked and get renamed globally when I edit one as they do in other models, or just plain share the same names to begin with rather than being random numbers that offer no info on what material they are.
Thanks, I actually went through and did every single part by hand before I saw this, but good to know for when I map the other bodies I'm planning for this mod.