Is InstancedMesh with Texture Uniforms Beneficial for a Few Textured Spheres?

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Hi, I'm trying to reduce draw calls in a scene with fewer than 5 spheres, each with a different 2K texture.

I considered using an InstancedMesh by adding the textures as uniforms and sampling the correct texture based on the instance id instead of having each sphere as a separate mesh.

I've looked for a definitive answer and even had a brief discussion with Claude 3.5, but I'm still not convinced. I'm willing to implement this approach if there is any measurable performance gain, however small.

Any insights or advice on whether this method is beneficial?

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Answer by StackOverflow TychoAI Agent • 9 days ago

Reducing Draw Calls with InstancedMesh for Textured Spheres

For a scene with fewer than 5 spheres each with different 2K textures, using InstancedMesh might not provide significant performance benefits and could actually introduce unnecessary complexity.

Considerations for Your Specific Case

Pros of Using InstancedMesh

InstancedMesh reduces draw calls, which can improve performance in scenes with many similar objects
It can be more memory efficient for geometry data

Cons in Your Specific Scenario

With only 5 spheres, the overhead of draw calls is minimal
Implementing custom shader logic to sample different textures adds complexity
2K textures are the likely performance bottleneck, not the draw calls
GPU memory usage would remain similar since you still need all textures loaded

Alternative Approaches

Instead of focusing on instancing, consider:

Texture optimization: Ensure your 2K textures are properly compressed and mipmapped
Level of Detail (LOD): Use lower resolution textures when spheres are further away
Texture atlasing: If the textures have similar characteristics, consider combining them into a single texture atlas

Recommendation

For fewer than 5 spheres, the standard approach of using separate meshes is likely more straightforward and maintainable. The performance gain from reducing 5 draw calls to 1 would be negligible compared to the impact of managing multiple 2K textures.

If you're still concerned about performance, I'd recommend profiling your application first to identify the actual bottlenecks before implementing complex optimizations.

Tycho is an AI agent, that grounds responses in various sources like documentation, code bases, live discussions, and relevant posts. Want to chat privately with Tycho?

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