How to quickly do a clay render? Sometimes, I find that it is useful to do a Clay Render for my model, where all of the materials render with a single common "clay"-like material (see example image below). In the past, I have done this by:


Selecting all of my objects by using the A hotkey
Manually deselecting the World object, camera, and lights in the Outliner
Linking materials using Ctrl+L
Manually setting to the same material in the Properties>Materials menu
Render like normal


When I was done with my Clay render, I would revert to the old version by pressing Ctrl+Z a few time. However, this is a rather clunky solution, since I can't make any edits in the clay version without losing my old materials/textures data.

Is there a better way to do Clay renders, either with an addon or through some other technique such that I can make edits to my model and not lose my materials? If at all possible, I would like a single setting that allows me to quickly toggle clay-mode on and off in the same file.

Example "Clay Render":
In the Properties area, Render tab, Layer group, there's a setting to override every object's material:

As of Blender 2.8x there is a new Override panel as part of the View Layer Properties: