A couple of Maya shading-graph chores I kept re-scripting on every project, curious how others approach them:
-
Duplicating a full shading network with clean names. Maya’s duplicate/paste leaves
pasted__prefixes and numbered suffixes across the copy, which I then rename by hand. I ended up walking the upstream graph and duplicating with unique, clean names instead - no prefix, no number suffix. -
Merging duplicate file-texture nodes. Scenes accumulate several file nodes pointing at the same texture; I rewire everything onto one shared node and delete the rest.
Plus the usual wrangling: search/filter materials, assign-to-selection / select-by-material, batch-rename shading groups, delete unused nodes, and find objects with no shader or stuck on the initial shading group.
How do you handle the duplicate-network naming and the duplicate-file-node cleanup - a script, an existing plugin, or just manually? Always after a cleaner approach, especially edge cases where walking the graph bites you.
I bundled my versions into a single-file MIT tool (Maya 2022+) if useful: https://github.com/ruxinliang-dev/materialist
feedback on the duplicate/merge edge cases especially welcome.
