What happens when the scene contains multiple of the same texture or model?

So lets say that my scene contains two of the same model/texture. When Unity loads the scene, does it load those resources into memory twice or does it do it once the first time and then reference that when the scene sees that there is a second instance of it?

What about multiple instances created from the same prefab?

Unity is generally pretty smart about this sort of thing. It will attempt to share resources when possible.

Bear in mind that behavior in the editor is less optimized than behavior in a built game.

If you check out Renderer in the script reference, you may notice that it exposes both material and sharedMaterial properties. By default, all renderers using the same material will “share” an instance of it. Many games edit materials at runtime; when you do that, Unity will create a copy of the shared instance so that you can edit it safely without affecting other renderers.

MeshFilter does much the same thing with mesh and sharedMesh properties.