Referencing materials is really helpful to build up a material library that you can quickly re-use on other projects to save time while also ensuring that your materials have a consistent look between different scenes, since the same material reference will be used in all scenes it's used in. A referenced material can still be edited at any time using MXED.
Working with referenced materials
Allows you to maintain independence between your materials and the scenes that contain them, which is extremely useful in a collaborative production environment. Using them instead of regular embedded materials allows you to:
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