Sprite atlases

If you use a separate texture for each of your sprites, Unity has to create and send a separate draw call to the GPU for each texture. As a result, performance can decrease.

To reduce the number of draw calls, create a sprite atlas. A sprite atlas combines multiple textures into a single texture. Unity only needs to create one draw call for all the sprites in a sprite atlas.

Note: If you use the Scriptable Render Pipeline Batcher, the number of draw calls might not decrease, but performance still improves a similar amount.

For more information, refer to Create a sprite atlas.

Assigning sprites to different sprite atlases

To avoid Unity sending multiple sprite atlases in a draw call, the recommended best practice is to create separate sprite atlases for the following:

• Each set of sprites you use at the same time, for example a different sprite atlas for each scene. This avoids Unity loading unused sprites into memory, or creating multiple combined textures for a large number of sprites.
• Sprites that need different compression settings. For example, create a sprite atlas for highly detailed character sprites, and a separate sprite atlas for less-detailed environment sprites.
• Frequently used and infrequently used sprites.

Additional resources

• Sprite atlas best practices in Unity 6 on the Unity YouTube channel
• 2D game art, animation, and lighting for artists