The CryENGINE 3 efforts this semester are to learn the UI and functionality. The sandbox engine offers full-quality realtime editing. Just starting it and seeing the water makes you want to start creating. The following description might be a bit tedious to read, sorry. It’s just that right now there sin’t anything more interesting to report.
Progress thus far includes an introduction to setting up the sandbox engine, the plugins for Maya, Photoshop and 3ds Max, as well as basic familiarization with the UI. Various folders have been explained. The sandbox engine is launched from the bin32/64 folder via the editor.exe.
Checking settings.mgr.ex is necessary, first, to ensure that rc.exe is pointing to the correct build.
A brief overview of the UI reveals a typical CG layout; main viewport occupying most of the screen real estate, a Rollup Bar section on the right (similar to 3ds Max), various customizeable tool bars, and a console on the bottom. Customization examples were given.
The console can connect to a comprehensive list of comments.
As mentioned, the Rollup bar is similar to Max, probably because Max is associated with game production. At least I doubt it’s a coincidence. The Rollup bar includes Objects, Terrain, Hide by Category and Layers.
The top menu system is just like any other Windows menu system you’ve seen: File, Edit, Modify, Display, Group, Prefab, Terrain, Sound, AI, Tools, Clouds, View, etc.
The toolbars also offer familar CG controls for select, move, rotate, scale, select terrain. You can also restrain movement to x,y and z axes should you so desire. One thing I like are the terrain snapping tools; one to snap another object to the terrain, another to snap to both the terrain and another object already on the terrain.
Other options include snap to grid, snap to angle (for rotation control), measuring the distance between two spots and selecting objects from a list. These are very similar to CG apps. There is also an ability to conveniently name selections and groups and then find them by name later. This is great for complex scenes with many assets. One can also export selections for modification as .OBJ files, or import them (obviously). The point is that all of these functions are very convenient and designed so that you can move between applications efficiently. Likewise there is an icon providing quick access to the Layer Manager.
There is also an Object toolbar offering various alignment options, the Terrain toolbar for editing topology, texture and lighting. The Dialogs toolbar has the material editor, character editor, database views, flow graph and an option to open the Asset Browser.
As I said you can customize the tools, keyboard commands, combine windows, etc. One feature I like is the option to see descriptions as you hover over various icons, telling you the shortcut key. This is a great way to learn.
The caustic light under water looks great and like I said the whole package just makes you want to create worlds that you can explore.
So far this seems more fun than intimidating, certainly something designed with purpose.
Eric Chamberlain 