Hi, I apologize if this is a noob question, but is there a way to clone/duplicate a material in zbrush (4r2)? I searched about but couldn’t find anything that helps.
Right now, if I want to change a material and then save it to something else, it replaces the original material within your project… same if you load a material in. So you can either have the original material, or the modified one, not both. Is there a way around that?
Any insight is appreciated, thanks.
Copy that material in the material palette with the "Copy Mat " button, select a different material slot, and “Paste Mat” there. You can then modify and save that material while still having the original active.
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, that’s what I figured, but that still overwrites an existing material, making it unavailable to you in that project. And then you’re also limited to the number of materials you’re wiling to sacrifice, as well as the total number of materials you have loaded at the start of the project. What if I need more?
[edit] Deferring to Marcus.
One point: The startup mats can be restored at any time by initializing the program, or loaded directly from their source directories, so they are never really “gone” or out of reach.
There are 85 default materials (excluding Flat Color). If you need more than that then you can save up to 25 in the ZStartup/Materials folder and they will load each time. That will give you 110 materials to use or to edit/replace in any one project. If you find you need more than that I’ll be interested to see your project. 
EDIT: I’m forgetting that each material can also be modified by color and (new in 4R2) by using the different Shader channels, so that the same material shows different effects depending on what shader operator you use. See here: Material Mixer
Thank you for your replies. Yeah, I am not disputing that there are not enough material slots. 
I was just wondering if there was a way that didn’t overwrite an existing slot, but I guess now I know.
The way I see it, you need to start each project with a lot of materials that you never use just to have them as spares – because you never know how many different shaders you may want to have in the end of the project. It’s mostly an organizational issue. And also, with all the new customization options for shaders and matcaps in r2, it’s very easy to want to make 4 different shaders just for one layer of one material type to see which works best, etc.
Not a huge issue, but I was just wondering. Thanks again for your replies.