Quote - "hey, not bad!  SM can add instancing that easy?  "

I honestly dont see much of a demand in this community
for the ability to render render 400 identical copies
of the that same tree,rock or figure ( see attached)

 

 

A tree or rock is fine. Merely having a rotation and slight scaling in some of the instances would do find as a cheat to pretend they aren't clones, and most of the time someone won't notice.

People however... humans are evolved to be very good at recognizing humans. You can't vary scale very much because it will look wrong. You can't merely rotate the figure because, well, humans have a defined front and a back and a top and a bottom that are instantly recognizable, so rotation doesn't help you much.

The ability to recognize people is why Photoshopping of, say, crowds to look bigger at political rallies don't usually stand up to scrutiny because people will quickly pick out the clones.