If you have to render an object with different materials, you can either change everytime the material by hand or you can use this little xpresso script and “takes-manager” to automate your renders. There are for sure other methods, but this works quite well for me.
(In my case i had like 30 different products to render, each with 10 different main colors. )
You would set up your products and then animate the user-data-input in your timeline. You can also extend you data to more materials-slots or connect it to more link-lists … and so on.
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1.jpg)
example setup
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2.jpg)
add material to your objects or objects
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/3.jpg)
add xpresso-tag
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/4.jpg)
add – user data to your object or Null
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/4a.jpg)
name: “what you like”
type: integer
interface: cycle button
The order of the items is important for later, the names not really, it´s just for you
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/5.jpg)
move your object and material/s into the expresso editor
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/6.jpg)
add node: link-list
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/7.jpg)
activate node-port USER_DATA on your object and select your user-data …. from before. in my case “Data-material”
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/8.jpg)
on the material-node you activate the port > Tag Properties > Material
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/9.jpg)
select the node link-list and move your selected materials into the list
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/10.jpg)
>> as mentioned before, the names are not that important, but the order
![](https://stefaneder.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/11.jpg)
Final setup, which you can now animate in your timeline and in combination with the “takes-manager” you can “automate” your renders. I setup 1 take, duplicate it and just modify the visiblity of each product like needed.