instanced

Instanced is the past participle of the noun instance and is used as an adjective in several technical contexts. It generally means that something exists as or has been created as an individual example of a broader category.

In computer science, instanced often refers to techniques or processes involving multiple copies of a common element. Instanced rendering, a widely used graphics technique, renders many copies of a single mesh with varying per-instance data such as transformation matrices or colors, allowing a single draw call to generate thousands of objects. This reduces CPU–GPU overhead and improves performance in real-time rendering, especially in games and simulations. Instanced data is typically supplied as arrays that the shader uses to vary appearance without duplicating geometry.

In object-oriented programming, instantiation is the process of creating an object from a class. An object that has been created is an instance of that class, and instantiation describes the act or state of having an instantiated object. The term helps distinguish between class definitions and the concrete objects created from them.

In other domains, instanced may describe resources, deployments, or events that exist as separate, labeled instances rather than a single pooled resource. The exact meaning often depends on the domain, but the common thread is the creation or designation of discrete instances from a common template or category.