CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By : Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

Buy this Book

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By: Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

With every successive console generation, the cost, time, and complexity of developing games has grown. Meet CryENGINE3, a middleware engine that is the perfect fit for most developers allowing users to exceed current generation quality standards while using less people and time than ever thought possible.The CryENGINE3 CookBook is packed full of recipes for junior and senior developers alike. It covers everything from creating photo realistic architectural visualizations to implementing advanced physics such as ragdoll and tornado effects. Topics covered include the sandbox, level layout, environment creation, AI, character creation, creating vehicles, and game logic. Every recipe is designed to add AAA quality to your games. The CryENGINE3 SDK has many tools immediately available to developers of all disciplines. For designers the book has recipes for building up your own levels and populating your levels with intelligent AI and photo realistic assets. For artists we have recipes for practical workflow tools and techniques used when working with the advanced CryENGINE shaders and materials. For animators we have recipes that will bring your creations to life using skinned characters and advanced animation systems like locomotion groups. Finally for programmers we have recipes that show how to employ the core mechanics behind entities such as vehicles and weapons while also utilizing the strengths of the physics engine to create a unique and exciting game.

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

CryENGINE 3: Getting Started

Introduction

Opening a level in the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox

Navigating a level with the Sandbox Camera

Setting up a personalized toolset layout

How to customize toolbars and menus

Using the Rollup Bar

Selecting and browsing level objects

Restoring the CryENGINE 3 default settings

Sandbox Basics

Introduction

Creating a new level

Generating a procedural terrain

Terrain sculpting

Setting up the terrain texture

Placing the objects in the world

Refining the object placement

Utilizing the layers for multiple developer collaboration

Switching to game mode

Saving your level

Exporting to an engine

Essential game objects

Running a map from the Launcher

Basic Level Layout

Introduction

Making basic shapes with the Solids tool

Editing and merging solids

Grouping the objects

Utilizing the Geom entities instead of brushes

Road construction

Painting vegetation

Breaking up tiling with Decals

Making caves with Voxels

Creating Prefabs to store in external libraries

Environment Creation

Introduction

Creating your first time of day using the basic parameters

Adjusting the terrain lighting

Using the real-time Global Illumination

Editing HDR lighting and the effects for flares

Creating a global volumetric fog

Creating a night scene with time of day parameters

Color grading your level

Creating a photo realistic ocean

Improving your sky with clouds

Making it rain in your level

Basic Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Placing the enemy AI

Generating the AI navigation

Forbidden boundaries

Forbidden areas

Setting up the interior navigation

Debugging the AI triangulation

Narrowing the AI's FOV to allow attacks from behind

Respawning AI

Asset Creation

Introduction

Installing the CryENGINE 3 plugin for 3D Studio Max

Creating textures using CryTIF

Setting up units to match CryENGINE in 3ds

Basic material setup in 3ds

Creating and exporting static objects

Creating and exporting destroyable objects

Using advanced material editor parameters to create animation

Creating new material effects

Creating image-based lighting

Characters and Animation

Introduction

Creating skinned characters for the CryENGINE

Ragdoll and physics for characters

Creating animation for your character

Previewing animations and characters for Sandbox

Creating upper body only animations

Creating locomotion animations

Animating rigid body geometry data

Creating Vehicles

Introduction

Creating a new car mesh (CGA)

Creating a new car XML

Giving more speed to the car

Increasing the mass to push objects with the car

Defining a sitting location

Setting up multiple cameras for the car

Need for a machine gun

Giving the car a weak spot

Game Logic

Introduction

How to beam the player to a tag point from a trigger

Making the AI go to a location when the player enters a proximity trigger

Debugging the Flow Graph

Creating a kill counter

Rewarding the player for reaching a kill goal

Displaying the player's health through a Flow Graph

Changing the player camera through key input

Creating a countdown timer

Track View and Cut-Scenes

Introduction

Creating a new Track View sequence

Animating a camera in the Track View

Triggering a sequence using the Flow Graph

Animating entities in the Track View

Playing animations on entities in the Track View

Using console variables (CVars) in the Track View

Fun Physics

Profiling and Improving Performance

Introduction

Profiling performance in the Sandbox

Saving level statics

Enabling the debug draw modes

Optimizing the levels with VisAreas and portals

Using light boxes and light areas

Activating and deactivating the layers

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Selecting and browsing level objects

To navigate levels is important, but to be able to select and browse your level objects is essential.

To do this, we will be using the Select Objects window, which enables you to quickly search for objects, hide, unhide, freeze, and unfreeze objects in a list type view.

Getting ready

To follow the example in this recipe, you should have the Forest.cry level loaded in the Sandbox editor.

How to do it...

Let's open the Select Objects window:

You can access the Select Objects window by using the EditMode toolbar or in the main menu, under View | Select Object(s).
You can also open the Select Objects window using the shortcut Control + T.
Press the heading of the column to sort the level objects based on that particular heading's type. In this case, let's sort by name.
You will notice all the objects in the level are listed here.
Using the Fast Select dialog type in shrine.
Use the Select button to transfer selections from the object's list to the editor's object selection.
You can now combine this with the use of the goto object button in the object toolbar.
Note
Remember the goto object function moves the editor view to that object's location.
Reset the selection using the Reset button, which resets the selection in the table and the editor's object selection.

How it works...

The layout of the Select Objects window is quite intuitive. It displays a list of the objects in the currently opened level, which can be sorted by the name of the objects, the type, and the layer the object is on or even by the material applied to the object.

You can also use the Select All button, which selects all the objects in the table and transfers them to the editor's object selection.

There's more...

There are a good deal of tools available immediately in the Select Objects window; you can browse frozen and hidden objects, the type of object, and even show dependencies.

Browsing frozen and hidden objects

You can browse through hidden or frozen objects without changing their corresponding state using the Display list to filter them from the object table.

List types

Enables the display of certain object types (Entities, Brushes, Prefabs); use these filters to display only the data that you need.

Display as a Tree

Indents child objects in Editor Hierarchies visually.

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By : Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By: Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

Selecting and browsing level objects

Getting ready

How to do it...

Note

How it works...

There's more...

Browsing frozen and hidden objects

List types

Display as a Tree

See also