@britzl wrote a nice summery here How to "merge" sprites in defold - #35 by britzl here is a blatant copy of it!
To clarify:
Rendering of sprites, spine models, particle fx etc
- Rendering is based on z-order, back to front.
- Components on different depths will be batched unless one of the following is different from the previous component:
- Component type (sprite, spine, particle, label, model)
- Texture
- Material
- Blend mode, tint etc
- Collection proxies
- Note: Each particle emitter will result in a draw call
Rendering of gui scenes
- Rendering is based on the order of the nodes in the outline, depth first
- Nodes will be batched unless one of the following is different from the previous node:
- Node type (box, text, pie)
- Texture
- Blend mode
- Font
- Stencil settings
Layers are used to group different nodes to reduce the number of draw calls. Some images:
Example of the complexity stencil add
A basic scene
Same scene with a stencil
