I have created a video to show the environment created using the engine. Unfortunately I can’t upload it here without upgrading, so I will give it to Professor Castillo via Google Drive, no problem.
CRYENGINE is a good engine that is very capable and goes beyond the small scope of this project. It is, however, glitchy. While unforeseen issues are expected in a research situation, the fact that it worked some of the time and not at other times makes me want to explore another engine. For example the issue of collision detection and physicalizing objects through materials in Maya. What I did get to work, and had working for the last few weeks, suddenly stopped working, inexplicably. I did not have time to redo the work and try again, but fortunately it did not impact the final project. The engine is easy to use, but the documentation is often very thin. Another issue is video recording built into the engine. High quality video recording settings resulted in distorted, unusable video that resembled the output from a damaged DVD. Lower quality settings worked but quick recording was not intuitive due to having to constantly change the name of the recorded file. I recorded at least 60 or 70 shots for the final video and it would have been painful to use the recorder. I instead used and external screen-capture application and did the assembly in Adobe Premiere.
In conclusion, this was a fun yet often frustrating project. I am glad I did it and I am happy to have an introduction to the engine. I feel like I know enough to construct a usable environment, but the glitchy nature would impact what could be created.
Eric Chamberlain 