Renderer / sorting group limit?

Unity Engine
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Today we encountered the following error when instantiating few more prefabs than usual in our UI:

“Number of renderers and sorting groups handled (4111) is greater than the limit (4095), Sorting Group is disabled.”

It seems quite a lot of sorting groups got disabled, because most of the UI looked messed up.

I’ve been googling and can’t find any information whatsoever relating to a max limit of renderers and sorting groups (which is it, even?).

If this is a hard limit imposed on sorting groups, then we probably have to stop using them, or we will hit that cap pretty soon.

Anyone able to clarify what’s going on?

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Anyone?

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That’s a lot of sorting groups. How many UI elements do you have?! And do you have a sorting group on every single object?

I think you might be the second person in history to hit the limit (and ask about it online), so I’m not sure what to say, other than yes, it’s probably a hard limit.

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Not many at all, actually. We usually put one on the top-level object of larger UI prefabs. I did a count of active sorting groups in the scene when the error happened and it was around 40, so I suspect it has more to do with the number of renderers inside a sorting group. Number of active renderers in the scene was around 800.

Edit: this is why I’m asking if anyone has any information about this limit, because there’s literally no documentation whatsoever around it, and as far as I can tell it should not be happening.

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We’ve also hit this limit. After some testing, I’ve found that a sorting group cannot contain more than 4’095 renderers and other sorting groups combined. You can create as many top-level sorting groups and renderers as you like (I tried 10’000s of groups and renderers) but each group is limited to only contain 4’095 renderers/groups.

The documentation doesn’t mention this limitation. It also never mentions that sorting order is limited to ±32’767.

Update: Disabled renderers/groups also count towards the limit.

1 Like
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Thanks, @ Your answer was the only piece of information I have found due this topic.