Official Tell us how you're using the Sorting Group Component

Hey Rus.

I've been using "nested" sorting groups .
I have characters made up of several pieces (arms, body, head etc.) in a sorting group called "character meshes" and then have that character in a parent object which uses the sorting group component to set the character into a "World" layer in a 2D map . From there I have a simple script that sets the Order value based on the Y position.
This way all characters are placed in the same sorting group layer and are correctly order sorted for moving on the map.

I've no real issues with this as it is but I'd love if you could set an enum if you wished to pass in the transform to the order value .

 

This has actually reminded me about this feature! I will definitely be using it on current project to fix a couple of sorting issues (characters holding weapons). I won't be using nesting but I can see the value there.

 

I've only started using this. I have a 2D top down (like zelda) where my character can walk behind objects like trees and walls. I'm using multiple sprites for body parts and weapons so this is great to stop my character's body parts fighting with the trees

 

Doing top down games I put sorting group components on character-parent(while the child objects just use sorting with sprite property) and objects like trees, bushes etc. so the character can sort with those when walking in front and behind.
No problems so far and don't really have any suggestions on how to expand the function.

 

I actually stumbled across this component accidentally. I'm using the Anima2D skeletal animation framework which, similar to some of the other posters, composites multiple sprites to make up a complete character. Each of these sprites uses their own "order in layer" value which is fine until I pull Unity's 2D tilemap system into the mix. I'm using isometric tilemaps and custom axis (y-axis) sorting which works great unless you have a skeletal character with different body parts with different order values. I just started searching through components for something that sounded like it might solve my problem and found the Sorting Group. Brilliant!

On a side note, I was also playing with the Unity 2D Animation Package preview which actually feels pretty good (and it's native), but I'll probably wait until it goes full release to commit to it. I've also only been playing with game dev for a few months so maybe take my endorsement with a grain of salt.

 

This is amazing. Found out about this by accident, too, immense time and sanity saver for me. Works perfectly for my purposes. I'm using it to group characters and props together, so they are drawn as one complete entity. This is important, because it would otherwise be almost unmanageable once you have multiple characters each made of out different sprites, and you cannot just shove them to different layers.

 

This has saved my project basically. I have a Grid Generator custom tool that would use a hex sprite prfab to make a flat top hex grid in the editor. I set the renderers sorting order and in editor it looked exactly how it was supposed to, but as soon as i hit play all of the cells would reorder themselves and ruin the map i had just made(many of the sprites are larger than the Hex). I finally saw this thread and just added a sorting group when i instantiated my grid and it fixed it. the cells now keep their rendering order when i play the scene. My project would have ended there without Sorting Groups.

 

I now have what I think is a bug with Sorting Group. For one, my setup behaves 'differently' now for no apparent reason, than it did a few days ago. I am not aware I made changes, but I might be mistaken. Restarting has no effect.

Bug Description
Sorting Group has no effect (anymore) when a game object with sprite renderers is put as child under it during runtime, but takes effect when (in runtime) Sorting Group is briefly disabled and enabled again.

I have a prefab with a Sorting Group, let's call it Item. I have a character who has a Holder game object also with a Sorting Group. In runtime, the Item is created from the prefab, and parented into the Holder. What should happen is that the Holder's Sorting Group determines where the Item is being rendered (namely to look as if carried by the character). This worked, but now the Item is rendered above everything else, somehow ignoring its parent's Sorting Group(s). I can disable and re-enable the component in runtime, and then it renders correctly. I see no difference when I remove the Sorting Group component on the item itself (I would need it when the item is dropped into the level, i.e. not carried around).

I might be doing something wrong. Let me know, to avoid (and fix) this issue, thanks

Edit: the issue disappeared, but I have no idea why (I did some refactoring on input and handling of the flipping, which also touches on parenting objects around).

 

I have been using the sorting group feature mainly for making sure that certain sprites appear on top of other sprites, for example a top down game where when the player walks behind the top half of a building the player sprite would be on a lower sorting layer than the top of the buildings to make sure the player is rendered behind the building.
I have also used this to make sure weapons are always rendered on top of enemies so that when attacking the weapon layer sprites don't compete with the enemy layer sprites.

 

Check out this video and especially from 3mins onwards, sorting based on an axis which might be suitable for your game.

 

1. Yes, actively in our most recent project.
2. The game is a 2D side-scroller and we put the sorting group on character root and other prefabs such as a building root that has multiple children. The big problem in Unity is adjusting the sorting order and layer for hundreds or even thousands of objects in a scene. When one order changes hundreds of other objects may need to be changed. Sorting Groups helps keep these changes more localized, because now we only have to sort characters and buildings against each other while keeping the attached children, e.g. windows and decorations within the sorting group.
3. We used it at some places initially but then found it a little bit too confusing and tried to limit the use of Sorting Groups to prefab roots close to the top-level or our hierarchy.
4. Initially, we thought we could simply build some kind of hierarchy with sorting groups which would help us sort large scenes, but we soon realized that it got confusing as to which renderers were sorted against each other and which were part of a sorting group, so we stepped back and only use groups for the top-level prefab roots now.
5. Not so much. We would actually slightly benefit from it because our custom tooling would become simpler. If overall performance would also benefit, we would welcome removing nested groups in favor of having a more easily understood sorting hierarchy with only one group per level.

Overall, we really like the Sorting Group component, but we could do without the ability to nest them.

 

1. Yes, a lot.
2. In current project we have several parallax layers of environment each of which has a Sorting Group. Sorting Groups allow us to manage draw orders of complex objects with ease.
3. Yes.
4. The objects in each parallax layers can be complex and consist of many Sprite Renderers. Sometimes we need to change the draw order of these objects inside the layer. Without nested Sorting Groups it would be a pain.
5. Please don't.

 

1. trying to sort sprites in top down view, by setting sordingOrder based on Y (and sometimes also X) coordinates.
(image: eyes and mouth are separate child sprites. User can pickup bomb and need to be drawn on top in that case, by switching sortinglayer. Gets too complicated fast..)

2. never heard
3. -
4. -

 

That's actually stunning! It really saves me a great deal of time and nerves. And it's just it for the needs I have

 

My main issue with sorting groups is it doesn't 'work' when combining Sprite Renderer and Image components. Both of these should 'use' sorting correctly

 

No, what's that?

 

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-SortingGroup.html

 

Thank you. It looks interesting but I don't think I would have some use for it.

 

Sorry to be reviving an old thread. And I submitted my replies, either way through the form.
But I have a question - why can we not record the sorting group sort order to the Mecanim?
We can record sprite renderer's sort order, but not the sorting group.
Kinda defeats the purpose of it, for me.

 

Maybe too late, but...

1. Yes, significantly.
2. We use it to control grouped units of sprite renderers on multiple children that should always be displayed together. The problem is that a flat stack of individual layers and layer IDs for the whole scene is difficult to expand. If I want to add a child to a compound object and couldn't use a sorting group, I'd have to push up the sorting IDs of everything in the scene that I want to render after the added renderer.
3. Yes, significantly.
4. We have prefabs that can be put "inside" other prefabs with drag and drop. The prefabs can be organized in their own group, dropped onto another a group and parented, and then belong to the parent group until removed. We have a "chest," for example, into which we might put items. We can then move the chest, and the items move and draw with it as if they were always grouped. Then, by removing the child, they can be moved and drawn separately again.
5. It would be a disaster if we couldn't use nested Sorting Groups without an equivalent replacement.

That said, I would really like the ability to exclude individual Sprite Renderers from a sorting group hierarchy, to decouple their movement in a hierarchy from their rendering order.

 

Sorting Groups is one of my favorite features of Unity and it's definitely essential to my game. My game uses many characters that are built by stacking multiple sprites, one on top of the other, so I was very happy to find out I can use Sorting Groups to put one multi-sprites character in front of the other without any visual issues. I was even more surprised when I noticed I can use many characters, with sorting groups applied to them, without any serious performance loss and it all worked flawlessly. Thank you for that feature!

As for nested sorting groups, I've never needed them but it sounds like a very good feature that I might need some day.

 

Sorting Group is very useful in its own context, but I am also interested to find out how it affects drawcall batching.
I am currently unable to batch my sprite drawcalls using URP and 2DRenderer and using Sorting Group. Also using Y as sorting axis.

Any information in regarding to this? My sprites are ofcourse in atlas using the same shader created using Shader Graph.

Is sorting order or sorting group component supposed to affect drawcall batching at all?

 

I was using a package from the asset store to generate 2D shapes using splines (the output being a mesh and MeshRenderer). The spline shape component had fed sorting layer information to the MeshRenderer, but I was still running into sorting issues. For whatever reason, the spline shape would only sort using its pivot point if the Sorting Group component was added to the GO. Not sure why, as the spline shape contained the same fields.

 

My particle shells have problems with the sorting layer, because it's inside the character, hoping to have an option that isn't affected by the parent sorting layer.

 

This would be amazing. Right now I have to unparent particle systems and sometimes even unparent and update their position every frame because of this.

 

I really really need this for 3D for the exact same reason it was made for 2D.
I have a set of renderers that must be renderer in order, no matter where they are. They act as one entity.
I have a fire particle effect that I want to always render behind the sword that emits it, so each sword+fire pack should be be considered as a group. If I have several of this groups, they must be rendered correctly one in front of the other.
The setting "Sorting fudge" on particle systems tries to help, but fails with objects that are close to each other. Stencil shader tricks are difficult to pull off. The idea would be to actually treat it as a group so that it gets rendered in the correct order.

Please!! This would be awesome for 3D too!

Also, right now it is impossible to do something like this with plain C# unless you write your own renderer culling and sorting. That's mostly not a good idea, nor possible with the current CullingResults API.

 

1. Yes
2. I need to be able to sort character part along with weapons but treat the entire character as 1 sorting layer when dealing with environment
3. No
4. N/A
5. While I can't think of a need for them now, if I did have a needed and this was unavailable, I imagine it would require a bit (or a lot) of custom code to accomplish a similar effect

 

1 - yes
2 - to make sprite mask apply only to sprites within a given sorting group
3 - no but I would if I could input a sorting group instead of a sprite in sprite mask. ( i want to add more masks on top of an already masked sprite, but i guess this would be extending the features of sprite mask and not sorting group )
4-

 

bumb

 

You have a Gameobject Player Character and a sortingGroup (character-order 0) on it. What do you think if you want to make some gameobject UI on top of player char? I'll insert it into the Gameobject Player Character, that's the fastest way. Here is a small and easier to understand example.

I think a possible option on SortingGroup is: not affected by the parent SortingGroup.

 

I agree with this 100%. I am doing a lot of extra work because of this.

 

Here is just one example I have.'

Sorting Layers:

Coin Particle System
Terrain
Crown

Both of these crowns are on the sorting layer Crown. I have a particle system coin under the rich crown. It needs to sort behind the terrain sorting layer, but I need the rich crown to sort on the Crown layer (in front of the terrain).

Since having the particle system coin under the rich crown, it will now sort to the crown layer and is now above the terrain. I have to unparent the coin particle system now. It would be simpler and less complex to put a sorting group on the coin particle system and say, ignore parent sorting groups.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

If you need more examples lmk!

Thanks!

 

Sorting Layers:

Rope
Terrain
Crown

When the player jumps onto a rope, if the player is wearing a crown, the crown will sort behind the terrain because the rope has a sorting group, and I have to parent the player to the rope. When the player leaves the rope, then the crown will sort in front of the terrain again.

My solution is to turn off the rope's sorting group when the player enters. This works except for when a rope potentially overlaps another rope.

 

1. Are you using the Sorting Group component?
2. If so, how are you using it? What problem are you solving using Sorting Groups?
3. Are you using nested Sorting Groups?
4. If so, how are you using them? What problem are you solving using nested Sorting Groups?
5. If we removed the ability to nest Sorting Groups, how would this impact your productions?

1. Yes
2. I am using it in complex unit gameobjects. It helps me organize individual sprite renderers in complex hierarchies.
3. I am using some nested sorting groups, yes.
4. Again, it simplifies the organization of individual sprite renderers.
5. Nested sorting groups are very important in my case of a 3D game using 2D sprites, with custom positional sorting. Without them, I would have to micromanage all my positional sorters.

 

I was using it, but I realized it broke after I added more than 31-32 renderers. Even when nested, it didn't help.

I ended up making a custom sorting system that's working just as fine and it's never breaking.

 

please let me know if there is a temporary script that solves this problem.

 

can you share it, still interesting

 

bit late to the party, I'm using this a bit in my new game. Would be nice to have a list of "exclude from sorting group" that we can drag renderers into.

 

@ChuanXin

Just wondering if the override feature is on the roadmap and coming soon !

 

Can you just make it so that I can add sprites to my character using the same depth that the sprite editor uses. Any attached sprites separate from the Rigged Character just is sits in-front. Unless there is a way to do this already please let me know. Nobody answers my questions

 

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to let anyone looking for the sorting group override feature that it has been posted for feedback.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/discussion-an-option-to-ignore-parent-sorting-groups.1175957/