Book Image

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By : Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)
Book Image

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By: Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

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.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
CryENGINE 3 Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Installing the CryENGINE 3 plugin for 3D Studio Max


As we will be using 3D Studio Max 2010 in the asset creation examples of this book, it is important that we explore the installation of the plug-in for 3ds max to allow for the exporting of meshes, animation, and other data to CryENGINE.

This first step in creating assets for the CryENGINE 3 is an important one. As most assets used within the CryENGINE need to be in an optimized format, we must export all of the source assets (asset we will work on in external packages like 3d studio max and Photoshop) through an optimization and conversion process. For this process to be successful it is imperative that the RESOURCE COMPILER be setup properly.

Note

The SDK installer should automatically install the plugins for the installed versions of 3ds Max during the CryENGINE 3 tools installation. In this case, the installer automatically sets up the system path, which allows the exporter to communicate with the Resource compiler.

Getting ready

To prepare...