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Instancing objects

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  • January 18, 2026 at 8:30 pm #21267
    Joe Hansen
    Participant

      Instancing objects instead of duplicating; does this save on poly-count?  Even though I’m instancing, it still appears to be upping my tris count in statistics (using blender version 4.5).  All my previous blender work has been mainly subsurface modeling where I’m not as worried about poly-count, but, this is an awesome opportunity for me to actually focus on low-poly if ever I was applying to a game company or somethin’.  All that to say, I’m a lil low-poly ignorant 🤪

      January 18, 2026 at 11:30 pm #99231
      Dwayne Savage
      Participant

        It still adds to the poly count, but it reduces the memory and calculation used in rendering since it only has to process the underlying materials and mesh data once. 

        January 19, 2026 at 2:45 am #99232
        Martin Bergwerf
        Participant

          Hi Joe @Joe_Hansen ,

          It reduces Memory and makes making changes to the same Object easier.

          It doesn’t really reduce Render calculations. The same Object in different places in a Scene receives different light.

          January 19, 2026 at 7:33 am #99233
          Omar Domenech
          Participant

            Instancing has saved me dozens of times. I can’t get a render going because my computer is low on memory, no problem, I start to optimize the scene and one of the first go to’s is instancing. When you don’t have intense and heavy scenes, instancing feels like a waste or a gimmick, but just you wait. 

            January 19, 2026 at 1:47 pm #99234
            Joe Hansen
            Participant

              Thanks so much for the insight!  While instancing isn’t gonna help me lower my poly count; it’s still a habit I’m getting into for objects that are meant to be identical/duplicated.  Thanks again for clearing up my misunderstanding while reenforcing why it’s still a solid habit to get into! 🙂

              January 19, 2026 at 5:49 pm #99235
              Dwayne Savage
              Participant

                Remember you can do transforms(Move, rotate, and scale) to get variations. In Blender, you can set materials to object level so that the objects can have different materials even though they are using the same mesh data. Object level materials is considered a bad habit for game development. I don’t know why. It seem the same as a texture ID array to me, but I’m very green on the programming side. 

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