Hi, I was wondering how Unity handles instancing of geometry. Can you save on polycount by using instance geometry for building the game level?
Let’s say I’m building some Roman style building with lots of pillars in it. Each pillar is made out of 50 triangles (just to keep the math simple). There should be 20 pillars in the room. Does it in some aspect help performance if I only import one pillar and makes instances of it in Unity, rather then importing the building with all 20 pillars?
I’m quessing that it will save on file size, the FBX will only contain 50 tris, rather then 1000 tris (50x20). But when all the pillars are on screen it still means that all 1000 (disregarding backface culling in this example) will need to be stored in video memory? Or does Unity do any fancy performance magic here? 
In short, does it save on performance, and not just file size, to use instanced geometry for static objects? And does it work well with the lightmapper?
Cheers!