Material Override Functionality in D5

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1

Dear D5 Team,

Thank you for your hard work and for giving us, the users, the opportunity to suggest and comment on the development of D5. It is greatly appreciated.

I would like to raise a concern regarding material override functionality. In V-Ray, there is a powerful “material override” option that allows users to quickly apply a global material while keeping all original textures intact. This is extremely useful during early feasibility stages for high-level context massing, and also later during design development presentations.

D5 currently offers the chalk style option, but there is no ability to apply alternative global materials such as timber or other finishes without manually changing all materials in the model. Unfortunately, this limitation disrupts my workflow, and I find myself having to move back to V-Ray to achieve this functionality.

Is there a workaround that I may not be aware of?

At the moment, the only alternative seems to be either:

  • Changing all materials to timber and then reverting back to the original textures, or
  • Maintaining two separate files and continuing to work on both.

Neither option provides an efficient pipeline workflow.

I would really appreciate your advice on this matter.

Thank you again for your continued development of D5

2

Hi @WB5

At the moment, D5 Render does not have a global material override feature similar to V-Ray’s material override, where all materials can be temporarily replaced while preserving originals.

There isn’t a built-in override function that swaps all materials globally without editing the model, which is why many users rely on duplicate files or manual workflows.

Your feedback is valuable, and I encourage you to post it in the Ideas & Requests section so the community can vote on it and the development team can review it.