Check if material is temporary at runtime.

I have 1000 red spheres rolling with sharedMaterial.
Then 1 of them need to start fading into green over time.

So before I start to change color I need to create new material and assign it to that concrete sphere.
In all next ticks I want to change that assigned material's color.

I can do it in editor with:
if (!UnityEditor.EditorUtility.IsPersistent(MeshRenderer.sharedMaterial))

How can I get same effect in runtime?

Or what is correct approach here? I don't want to create 1000 instances of same red material.

Code (CSharp):

1.         Color targetColor;
2.         MeshRenderer renderer;
3.         void Update() {
4.             if (renderer.sharedMaterial.color == targetColor) return;
5.  
6.             var material = new Material(renderer.sharedMaterial);
7.             Destroy (renderer.sharedMaterial);
8.             renderer.sharedMaterial = material;
9.             renderer.sharedMaterial.color = Color.Lerp(renderer.sharedMaterial.color, targetColor, Time.deltaTime);
10.         }

This code creates Material every frame.
Also it throws first time on Destroy, because it can't destroy asset material.
If I don't create it then I change color over all spheres.
If I use .material then it creates new material also as I got from documentation.

 

What's keeping you from setting the .material of the special sphere once to a different material, and then lerp the color on that material? All other spheres will still be using the shared red material.

 

To do this I need additional boolean like
bool isMaterialUnmodified = true;

then
if (renderer.sharedMaterial.color != targetColor && isMaterialUnmodified) {
renderer.material = new Material(renderer.sharedMaterial);
isMaterialUnmodified = false;
}

Is it right?