August 06, 2014, 06:53:38 am
I've done a few tests (810 torus objects, 10.5k faces each, 4.3M vertices) given that topic goes back to 2011. As far as I can see there's no difference between Instanced or Referenced. Lumion converts all objects to a single mesh object. I got the same 3D Count and FPS whatever import method including Max and FBX, so I'm not sure why the user got that big a difference in FPS.
I'll have a chat with our import/export developer to confirm or otherwise. Maybe some of our Max experts can comment (Gilson?).
The interesting result was that Lumion will read an FBX with Instances flag On and recognise the single object as Instanced, which effectively is same as reading the Max file direct. All good

. Only real advantage is smaller FBX file, but if you can read Max anyway, why bother with FBX

.
It means that source Max files with instances can be used and take advantage of Max tools. However the user still needs to be
very aware that in Lumion it is not automatically making instances, it's making a mesh of the instances. (ah by the way, that's a mesh, not a mess

)
This ignores texturing aspects.