[HELP IDEAS]Populating Scene with same objects in Maya

WarframeZeeker

As the name implies I am trying to create a treasure room full of coins that is similar to the Hobbit movie Desolation of Smaug, and I am not sure how to do it. I have tried using Mash feature to populate my scene, but it does create performance issues with my computer that causes significant delay. Is there away to populate gold coins in the scene without increasing computer performance requirements? Paintfx? Ivy Generator?

A link to a tutorial will also be great since i am new to 3d modeling. Thank you in advance.

.Wiki

If its for a game engine, then you could try it with a tilable ground texture with gold coins. On top of this there could be meshes that are created with a foliage system. So they only get rendered when you are close to them. 
This is the way large terrains with grass are created.

WarframeZeeker

 No its for only a scene in Maya that I need to make a camera pass through off and showcase the lighting and textures of the scene. You mentioned tile-able textures so I can do it in substance painter/designer and use it as a texture for my floor? Foliage system like ivy generator? I look up into it seems like its mostly for plants. Oh, and thank you for helping/replying much appreciated.

.Wiki

If its for rendering then i would do it with a particle system and instanced geometries.

WarframeZeeker

Ya it would be batch rendering only. Is nparticles and instance geometries better in reducing computational processing requirements then using Mash system?

.Wiki

Using particles and instanced geometries will save you a lot of ram and computing power on rendertime. Instead of calculating millions of polygons of a single mesh you only calculate the polygons of a single particle instance and use these polygons in multiple places.

throttlekitty

If you have a lot of huge/tall piles of coins, you can also use meshes to generate where the coins will be. Basically small lumpy approximations of the shape of the pile to avoid generating thousands of coins that you won't see. I had just recently seen this video so it's a bit fresh on my mind. With this method you'll have lots of penetrating coins however.