Selecting materials

[zorak33]

I've got a kind of modular scene with lots of instances.
I'm new at this so I keep wanting to tweak things as I go along...

Is there any way I can select a material independantly from an object, modify it, and then have it propagate to all the things in the scene with that material applied?

I've tried parenting and grouping and instancing - what am I doing wrong?!

Or is the only way to make a preset and then go through and apply it to everything...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[richard-sher]

There are many different ways.
Here are 2.

Create a group.
Assign your material to that group.
Drop objects that you want to use your material into that group.

or

Branch select an object.
Apply the matieral.
Anything you make a child of that object will use that material.

[zorak33]

Thank you so much, my life will be much easier now. The grouping method worked, branch selecting didn't, I'm not sure why.

Another peculiar thing seems to happen when applying a preset straight to an object from a browser - the object remains highlighted as if selected even when nothing is selected.
Re-selecting it from the explorer doesn't change anything either although the command box seems to recognise selecting/deselecting...
peculiar.
This doesnt seem to happen if the preset is applied to the object in an explorer rather than view.