So I have 12gigs ram. Especially when working in 4k, really complex material combinations starts to become an issue. To relieve this, once i'm happy with a complex material setup for a component of a mesh, I will export all the maps and create a layer form them, and use a mask to designate it to the parts I want that material on. I will then delete all the material groups that got me to that result. Doing this free's up a lot of memory so I can work on different components, with in the same project. If i didn't do this, all the different layers and effects would completely monopolize my memory. It is made even worse if you have an object with many different kinds of materials, like combinations of wood, metal, plastic, ect.
It reminds me a lot of flattening or merging layers in photoshop. Is there an easier way to do this than exporting everything and bringing it in as a new layer. A merge layer or flatten layers button would be great. Is there anything like this that i have missed?
