Importing whole scene from external assets

Hi all,

I've got the option of importing an entire scene's worth of assets from a single FBX file, which would have the terrain, scattered (duplicated) houses/trees, textures and whatever else included. Considering it does have a hierachy included, i can still modify it, like move trees or resize them etc.

Now my question is - should i be loading the entire scene from a single model/file, or should i have plenty of smaller models and compile them together in Unity?

This is primarily for updating purposes, so when the artist makes changes that they are easily update-able with any other changes added to the scene like lighting/effects and so on.

Key concerns I have:
1. Game size, seems that loading a 500mb file for one scene is a bit much or is that ok? What about memory impact?
2. Duplicate objects - if i have 20 of the same house, thats 20 'different' houses imported. Unity will cache/load them faster right?
3. Terrain scripts like object collision, baking, pathfinding etc - are those still fine or now subpar?

Thanks for all your input,
Primoz

 

bump