Instances should appear as one mesh in exports.
When working in blender its possible to make "instances" of different groups. Eg. groups to dupliverts, or collections > instance to scene.
When working with these instances they appear as one object in the scene.
However when exporting to FBX they get split back into the source components and appear as multiple objects.
Having them merged into one object on export would be extremely handy for working in game engines such as unity 3d where its inefficient to leave meshes split up into multiple chunks.
2 Comments
This is a known issue with FBX and USD.
it seems its still the case after 3 years. One of the strongest feature of FBX file is instancing, drastically removing size on complex scenes. Its a pity its still not solved.