Deleting Materials

You can delete materials from the explorer as would any other scene element. When deleting materials, keep the following in mind:

Deleting a material removes it from the scene entirely. If you want to remove a material from an object without deleting it, you can unassign it, as described in Removing Materials From Objects.
You cannot delete a material when it's the only one in the scene.
If you delete the material that's currently assigned to the object, the default scene material is then assigned to the object.
If you delete the default scene material, the least recently created (oldest) material in the scene becomes the new default material and is assigned to all objects to which the previous default material was assigned.
You can only delete materials from a material library's hierarchy. Deleting a material from the hierarchy of an object to which it is assigned simply unassigns the material, regardless of whether it is the only object using the material.

To delete a material

Open the material manager.
Open a material library and select one or more materials you want to delete by clicking their shaderballs in the shelf.
Do any of the following to delete the selected materials:
- Press the Delete key.
  
  or
- Choose the Materials Delete Materials command or click its icon in the command bar.
  
  or
- Right-click on the material's shaderball and choose Delete.

To delete a material using the explorer

Open an explorer and set the scope to Materials.
Select the material you wish to delete and then either press Delete or right-click the material and choose Delete.

Deleting Unused Materials

Rather than individually locating and deleting unused materials, you can remove all of a library or scene's unused materials at once.

NoteMaterials on partitions in passes other than the current pass appear to be unused. However, they are not removed automatically by these commands.

To delete unused materials in a library

Open the material manager.
Click the material library tab whose unused materials you want to delete.
Choose the Materials > Delete Unused Materials command.

The unused materials in the current library are deleted.

To delete unused materials in a library using the explorer

Open an explorer and set the scope to Materials to display all of the scene's material libraries.
Right-click the node of the material library whose unused materials you wish to delete and choose Remove Unused Materials.

To delete all unused materials in a library using the explorer

Open an explorer and set the scope to Sources/Clips.
Right-click the Materials node, or the List node below it, and choose Remove Unused Materials from the menu.