is the one mapper to multiple actors pattern familiar to you? If so, is there an possible modification here to avoid rebuilding VBOs?
Yes. I believe the actor pointer, VBO pair can be cached internally to prevent rebuilds?
That gets complicated when you think about how to clear that cache for an actor that’s no longer used.
The only time this pattern has benefits is when you want to draw same mesh with different representations, or when you want to assign each actor/vtkProperty a different setting.
If you’re assigning different transform matrices/colors to each of the actors, I suggest using the glyph mapper instead.