(Shopify) Hide thumbnails of unselected variants

For my shopify store, all products that exist now and that I create in the future, I would like to have ONLY the images of the currently selected variants displayed as thumbnails. And the selected thumbnail displayed as the large image (first thumbnail selected by default).

I want to have the ability to link each variant to one or multiple images myself, maybe using 'alt-text' or meta data for each image. I am not sure the best way to do this.

Thank you for your help!