Hello guys,
I am bit curious about optimizing a scene especially in terms of RAM/VRAM usage. I did some digging and found out that Blender is equipped with object and group linked instancing. You can copy instances object that are linked and therefore share same object data. You can also make groups of object in another seperated scene and then linked them into your primary scene as and “empty”. Especially the last one looks like a v-ray proxy system that I am familiar with. Now I wasn’t able to find more info about actual impact on RAM/VRAM usage while using such a kind of instancing. Could someone enlighten me please? Would this save me VRAM usage when using instancing significantly, is it worth it? Is just object instancing (in same scene) enought or is GROUP instance link from another file better? I ask because VRAM limitation is kinda tricky (atleast for me).
Yes, but you’re mixing two different things in those two sentences.
A linked duplicate (alt+d, or ctrl+L -> object data) is an unique object that share object data. This saves memory, as it instances object data, but not as much as object instancing
Object instancing options are:
procedural duplication, which are frame/vertex/face/group duplication, and dupligroups have the option in add menu to create a group instance from an existing group directly
particle system
linked libraries, which are linked from another file
Thank you for clarification, I somehow got it like you are describing but I wasn’t aware of that many options of object instancing. Mainly thanks for clarification about memory savings that was really helpful for me! I will check out that link.