MaterialAuthor.duplicate

Clones an existing material under a new name and layers overrides on top. The clone is a verbatim copy of the source — its shader, every property, and every texture binding — so it renders identically until the overrides (property values and per-slot texture swaps) are applied, making it the quick way to derive a variant like a wetter, glossier version of an existing surface. The source is given by material ref or name, and the result is returned as a live material ref.

This is an authoring action performed at design time: it writes a new source material asset. Never call it from gameplay code — at runtime you apply an already-authored material through the lower-level Material surface.