stride3d/stride · error · ArgumentOutOfRangeException

Cannot specify the format for more than 8 Render Targets.

Error message

Cannot specify the format for more than 8 Render Targets.

What it means

RenderOutputDescription's constructor validates that the renderTargetFormats span has at most 8 entries, matching the MaximumRenderTargetCount supported by the underlying GPU API (D3D11/Vulkan simultaneous render target limit). The library throws ArgumentOutOfRangeException immediately if more formats are supplied.

Solutions

1. Reduce the number of render target formats to 8 or fewer
2. Split rendering into multiple passes if more than 8 simultaneous targets are needed
3. Assert/span slice: only take the first 8 formats if the extra entries were accidental

Example fix

// before
var desc = new RenderOutputDescription(formats); // formats.Length == 12
// after
var desc = new RenderOutputDescription(formats.Slice(0, Math.Min(formats.Length, 8)));

if (formats.Length > 8) throw new InvalidOperationException("Max 8 render targets supported");

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a ReadOnlySpan<PixelFormat> with Length > 8 to the RenderOutputDescription constructor.

Common situations: Building a render frame description for a graphics API that supports more render targets than Stride's 8-MRT limit (e.g. Metal allows more), or programmatically generating formats without checking count.

Understand the failure class

Background: "value must be between 0 and 1" / "out of range" / "must not be negative" errors: fixing range-validation failures across open-source libraries — this error's family across 42 libraries.

Related errors

• Invalid mipmap level
• Invalid z slice index
• Invalid array slice index
• The Graphics Resource is a Texture, but its dimension is…
• Value must be in between 1 and 32

AI-assisted analysis of stride3d/stride@96fad776d2 (2026-09-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/81a56d3278d90bda. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at sources/engine/Stride.Graphics/RenderOutputDescription.cs:185

        /// </param>
        /// <param name="depthStencilFormat">
        ///   The depth format of the Depth-Stencil Buffer.
        ///   Specify <see cref="PixelFormat.None"/> to disable the Depth-Stencil Buffer.
        /// </param>
        /// <param name="multisampleCount">
        ///   The number of samples to use when multi-sampling.
        ///   Specify <see cref="MultisampleCount.None"/> to disable multi-sampling.
        /// </param>
        /// <exception cref="ArgumentOutOfRangeException">
        ///   Cannot specify the format for more than 8 Render Targets in <paramref name="renderTargetFormats"/>.
        /// </exception>
        public RenderOutputDescription(ReadOnlySpan<PixelFormat> renderTargetFormats,
                                       PixelFormat depthStencilFormat = PixelFormat.None,
                                       MultisampleCount multisampleCount = MultisampleCount.None)
            : this()
        {
            if (renderTargetFormats.Length > 8)
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(nameof(renderTargetFormats), "Cannot specify the format for more than 8 Render Targets.");

            int lastSetRenderTarget = -1;
            for (int i = 0; i < MaximumRenderTargetCount; i++)
                if (renderTargetFormats[i] != PixelFormat.None)
                    lastSetRenderTarget = i;

            RenderTargetCount = lastSetRenderTarget + 1; // +1 so 0 if -1, 1 if 0, etc.
            renderTargetFormats.CopyTo(RenderTargetFormats);
            DepthStencilFormat = depthStencilFormat;
            MultisampleCount = multisampleCount;
        }


        /// <summary>
        ///   Captures the description of the pipeline render output from a Command List.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="commandList">The Command List from which to capture the pipeline render output configuration.</param>
        public unsafe void CaptureState(CommandList commandList)

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