Now, the time has come to adjust the overall lighting of our level. The fastest and easiest way to achieve a huge variety of atmospheres and settings is by using the Time of day feature in CryENGINE.
The sun in CryENGINE is approximated by a colored, directional light without distance attenuation. This is important to understand as its properties are similar to that of a regular light, and properties such as color and specular level can be adjusted. There is an important distinction, however, to the sun and other lights in CryENGINE, as the sun uses a technology called cascaded shadow maps.
Open the Time Of Day dialog box from Terrain | Time Of Day.
Note that when you highlight any of the basic parameters in the time of day dialog, there are key frames set already represented by the small, yellow squares on the timeline in the preceding screenshot.
This timeline is represented by a 24-hour slider at the top of the Time Of Day...