Week 3, Class Task

Image of Work for the Following: 


Claude Lorrain 

William Gilpin

Capability Brown 

Humphrey Repton

JMW Turner

Suzhou, West Lake 

Week 2, Independent Task

Geocontrol2 and CryEngine 3


Using 1st Image of the previous post, 'Mountain Landscape'. 
Letter and Number: 2 and U.
I've used a 2, and then continued drawing the U but the U is rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise so that the continued 2 and the U looks like a 3.


Images Below: 
Image 1. Island with Texture
Image 2. Island without Texture 

Concept is Mountains. Snowy/Misty/Dull etc. 
Another 5 Reference Images. 

2nd Island 
GeoControl2 Snaps. 2D and 3D. (3) 

 

Terrain Texture 

Terrain Texture in CryEngine Model 

Week 2, Class Task

"5 Reference Images of Different Landscapes" 
List characteristics of vegetation, terrain, and lighting for each one. 


1. Mountain Landscape 
Risen bumpy terrains as Mountains and flat landscapes with slight vegetation at the bottom of the Mountains. 
Lighting is dull and misty blue (it gives a cold feeling). 

2. Beach Landscape 
The terrain is very flat; it extends from the sand and continues through the waterline. 
Vegetation is present on soil and rocky grounds. Vegetation isn't present on the sand. 
Bright lighting; photo shot during the daytime. 

3. Snow Landscape  
The terrain is very flat. There is vegetation but it is either isolated or cluttered. 
The lighting is very dim and dull. 

4. City Landscape (Hong Kong; Place of Origin) 
The terrain on which the city sits on is very flat, however not all of the Hong Kong Island is filled with city buildings. 
Behind the cityscape are mountains merging towards the cityscape.  
The weather makes everything seem dull and misty. But during the night, the night lights shine bright. 

5. Forest Landscape

Terrain is flat, but also risen in some places. Lighting is bright, even through all the trees (the colour of the autumn leaves).

CryEngine Fraps 
1. Heightmap and texture in CryEngine. It's a bit large, but I'll edit that later. You can see the 2U as a "3". 
I haven't added textures or layer painters yet. I'll do it for the second island. 
I don't really like this one, my concept is about Mountains, but this heightmap looks really flat. I'll need to change that. 

Video Tutorial Notes: CryENGINE 3 - Vol 1 - An Introduction and Application

Your First Level - Modelling the Terrain

Roll up bar > Modify Tab > Terrain > Modify

Brush Settings: Flatten, Smooth, Rise/Lower, Pick Height

Flatten lets you flatten the surface of the terrain based on the area that you pick. Increase radius to flatten a larger area; the inside radius means that from the sides to the centre, the effect will be smoother - the edges will not be as hard/sharp.

If you want the edges to be harder/sharper, increase the hardness

Pick height allows you to pick the height of the current terrain you'd like to modify to (if there's a specific height on the currently terrain, use Pick  Height).

Control + Pick Height (You can see the height value).

Toggle Ocean Off: Hide Tab > Render Settings > Untick Ocean. Now you'll only see the terrain.

Smooth > Smoothes out the terrain, eliminates the hard edges.

Week 1, Independent Study

"Customising the Editor" 

(5 Ways to Customise the Sandbox Editor Setup) 

1. Customising Windows (Creating Tabs) 

First, bring up three commonly used windows. 

To bring up the Material Editor, press "m" on your keyboard or click on the checkered circle icon on the second toolbar at the top. To bring up the Database View, click on the second icon to the left of the Material  Editor icon (DB). To bring up the Flow Graph, click on the icon to the right of the Database View icon (FG). 

Drag and drop one window on top of another to create tabs (this will enable a less chaotic interface). Instead of having to work with three open windows; one open window with tabs is easier to use. To detach them, pull one window out of the window with tabs and close them. 

2. Customising Windows (Attaching Panels) 

You can attach panels to the side of your panel. To attach the Material Editor to the left; drag the window, and you will see four arrow icons (top, left, bottom and right). Hover your mouse onto the left icon and drop your window. Your window will now be connected to the left of the interface window. You can resize the window. To detach, drag and drop it back into the middle of the screen. You can do the same with the Rollup Bar and the Console; you can attach and detach them, and alter their positions on the main window. 

The toolbars can be turned on and off. 

3. Customising the Editor 

Go to "Tools", then "Customising Keyboard..", it will open up a Customise window. You can customise the toolbars, you can add comments to your toolbars. You can also create your own toolbar by clicking "New..", and dragging and dropping certain comments. Another way to access the Customise window is to right click on an empty area and click "Customise..".

Also in the "Customise" window, go to the "Options" tab and check the "Show shortcut keys in the ScreenTips" box. I find this particularly useful. It will be useful to those who don't know the shortcuts to CryEngine. For example, if you hover over the top of an icon, a small box will appear identifying what the icon is, and next to the text in brackets is the shortcut key (e.g. Select and Move (I); meaning the shortcut button is "I"). 

Lastly in the "Customise" window, go into the last tab, the "Keyboard" tab where you can create your own hotkeys. 

4. Preferences Panel 

Go into "Tools", and "Preferences" and "General Settings". E.g. Console background, you can change the colour of the console background.

Recommended to turn off "Enable Surface Control" to "False". 

"Back up Unsafe should be on" to "True", the more back ups you have, the better it is. If you do not have the habit of constantly saving you work, it is recommended that you enable "Auto Backup" and you can set up an interval of a backup each 5 or 10 minutes. So if you turn it on, every 5 or 10 minutes, there will be backed up files of the level you are working on. 

4.1 "Viewports" in the Preferences Panel 

The following two viewport settings seem pretty useful: "Highlight Selected Geometry" and "Highlight Geometry on Mouse Over", turn both on to "True". And so now when the mouse hovers over the object, there are yellow lines and a pinkish shader on top of the shader. It is useful in pre-visualising the object you are about to select. If the object is selected, it gets tinted as a white shader. If you don't like the white shader, you can turn of "Highlight selected Geometry". 

You can also customise the "Selection Preview Colour". E.g. "Geometry Color", you can change that pinkish shade to whatever colour you want. 

5. Configure User Commands 

You can have a panel on  the left or the right with your most used commands. This is particularly useful is you have to turn any sounds, music render settings  etc on and off. 

Go to "Tools", to "Configure User Commands". Macros, create a new one e.g. "Turn off sounds and music". Commands, (MusicEnable 0, SoundEnable 0), and press "Ok". Then when you go into "Tools", "User Commands", you have a button now that says "Turn off sounds and music". You can drag this command into your Viewport, you can attach it to the side, and you can put it in your toolbars. 

E.g. (Type "r_DisplayInfo 0" to turn off all the statistics on the top right hand side of the Viewport, or you can make another Macro, Command for this).

Instead of putting 0, you can check the "Toggle Variable C" box, and so that each time you click on the button, you will toggle between 0 and 1 (so on and off).  

"Viewports" 

(3 Ways to Move Around) 

1. Keyboard  

"W" You move forwards, "S" You move backwards, "A" You move left, and "D" You move right. 

When you are moving forward, you can press "Shift" to move slightly faster.

2. Mouse 

Press right mouse button on your Viewport, to look around.

Press middle mouse button on your Viewport, to pan around. 

Press middle mouse button and right mouse button at the same time; move the mouse up and down; the faster you move it, the faster you will fly around forwards and backwards in your scene. 

Another way to move forwards and backwards, you can use your mouse scroll for that (mouse middle button). 

Press Alt and middle mouse button to rotate your camera (like 3DS Max).

3. Speed 

The default is 0.1.

There are three standard values (0.1, 1 and 10).

The higher the value, the faster the camera moves. The lower the value, the slower the camera moves. 

_ Extra Tip. (Useful!) 

4. Clipping with Terrain 

Button on the bottom toolbar, to the right of the Speed standard values. 

Enabling means you are unable to go through the terrain (you can still go through objects but not the terrain). 

Disabling mean you are able to go through everything, including the terrain. 

"User Interface Panels - Overview" 

(5 Shortcuts or Buttons) 

1. Select Objects Panel 

First toolbar, next to the white input box on the right (left of the input box) 

Control + T to bring up the window. It shows a list of all the objects in your scene. You can search an object in your scene and choose to select it. In the editor, you always have the name of the entity. You can find it in the rollup bar, in the "Create" tab, in an input field below. You can edit the input box to rename entities. 

2. Asset Browser

"Open Asset Browser" can be found on the second toolbar in text. It can be used to browse for assets, brushes, sounds and also textures. Say if you want to browse for Brushes, you'd have to un-tick the "Sounds" and "Textures" boxes. And so then on the right, you will get a list displaying all the brushes present in your build. You can increase the size of the thumbnail for a closer preview of the brush ("Thumb size", change input box value), or you can decrease the size. It also allows you to drag and drop brushes into the editor. Or you can use the "Brush" browser to bring things into the scene. 

3. Database View

In the toolbar, the icon "DB" is for the Database View window. 

You have the entity library; there are a lot of entities you can use and drop onto your level. Entities are like an advanced brush, they have physics. This is where you will tweak all those values and parameters, you can change values, e.g. if it is pickable or not, mass (how heavy it is), if it can be blown up etc. You can choose to make it physicalised (e.g. if you enable pickable then it means when you go into the game, the character is able to pick up the entity and throw it).

There is also the Prefabs library (where all your prefabs are loaded), Vegetation (there are a number of options which are not present in the Vegetation tab on the Rollup bar),  Particles (where you load your particle images e.g. Water particles to create a waterfall), Music (managing the music in your level e.g. you can specify action music if enemies are nearby), Revert Presets (e.g. if you shoot inside a tunnel, there will be echoes), Sound Moods, and Game Tokens. 

Shift + Space to turn helpers on. 

4. Lighting 

Lighting panel, second toolbar with the sun icon and text "Lighting". You can change time of day. E.g. If you change the time of the day to around 4.P.M, there is a sunset. 

You can also check and change the direction of the sun. Also you can alter what hour the sun sets and the time of dawn as well. 

4.1 Time of Day

You can make a custom toolbar for this command (refer to my previous post in "Customising the Editor", post 5. Customising User Commands). You can also find this in the "View" tab, then "Open View Pane", then "Time of Day". You can change the time of your level, e.g. If you want 4.P.M, you'd type 16.

You can also change ocean fog colour, the colour of your level, saturation and more. 

5. Flow Graph 

The "FG" icon on the second toolbar will open the Flow Graph window. This is where you will script your level e.g. Moving an entity from Point A to Point B (moving entities). 

You can add nodes to other nodes (a visual scripting, no comments or commands needed). 

Week 1, Class Task

"Getting Started and Folder Structure" 

(List of 5 Learnt Aspects) 

Immediately after unarchiving the downloaded CryEngine 3 Free SDK, are several folders. 

1. Editor Folders 

"Bin32" and "Bin64" folders are where your executables, game files and Editor are. If running a 64-bit operative system, then it is recommended that the "BIn64" Editor is to be used; it loads faster and allows much more memory usage than the "Bin32" Editor. 

2. Game Folder and other Folders 

The "Editor" folder are where the files for the editor are stored. The "Engine" folder are where the shaders get stored; and other engine related files. 

The "Game" folder is the most important. Inside the ".pak" files are where the whole game is located. Everything from animations, CGF files (assets) to sounds, materials, particles, textures etc. These .pak files can be opened with WinRAR, WinZIP (any archiving program); there is an "Objects" folder inside each of  these .pak files which contain more folders and files holding the vast majority of the objects of the build. "Objects" folders can be extracted to "unlock" the materials and transfer them into your level if you want to work with them. 

3. References (When running into problems)

Use the crydev.net forums for references. There are many articles, guides and tutorials in the forums. Posting on the forums for assistance is also good. 

For Official Documentation such as manuals, fundamentals and guides - Refer to sdk.crydev.net or freesdk.crydev.net for more information. 

4. For Exporting Textures and Assets 

Install exported plugins for 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop and Maya. 

It is recommended that the "SettingsMgr.exe" is booted at least once before you start working. Open up the executable file and make sure there is a green light. This means that the engine detects the RC. It compiles your CGFs when you export assets and also complies CryTiff textures into 3DS textures (it is important that this is working). Make sure the root directory is pointing to the build you are using (e.g. 64 Bit Editor). Click on the icon with the "..." to look for the "RC" if the light is red. You'd want to make sure that your plugins are installed properly before you start working. 

5. Installing Exporter Plugins (CryTIF Plugin and 3DS Max Tools)

For the CryTIF Plugin:  

First, go into the "Bin 32" folder and find the following 3 files: 

zlibl.dll

jpeg62.dll

libtiff3.dll

Copy these 3 files and paste them on the root of the Photoshop folder (Most commonly, C Drive/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Photoshop CS5). Return to the "Tools" folder in your CryEngine folder and copy the CryTIF Plugin for Photoshop. If your Photoshop is the 64 Bit version, copy the 64 file. If it is the 32 Bit version, copy the 32 file. 

For the 3DS Max Tools Plugin: 

You will need to go into the "Tools" folder again.  

Make sure to copy the right file for the right version of 3DS Max (Check this if in doubt: http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Installing+the+3ds+Max+Tools ). E.g. I am using the 3DS Max 2012 Version so will copy the "CryExport14_64.dlu" file into the 3DS Max 2012/Plugins folder. 

For CryMax Tools: 

Open CryMax Tools folder and load "copyTomax.bat". A black window will pop-up. Then type the letter of the Drive that 3DS Max is installed in (e.g for C: Drive, you'll type in "c") and it will install itself for you. So now when you re-open 3DS Max, there will be a new menu with a panel of useful features such as de-bugging and creating collision proxies. 

After installing both Plugins, check to make sure the light is green. 

For installing other Plugins: http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Installing+Exporter+Plugins . 

Now the Editor is ready to be booted up.

"Overview of the CryEngine 3 Sandbox User Interface" 

(10 Tips and Tricks) 

1. Viewports 

On the top left, you can see the text "Perspective"; meaning the current viewport is in a "Perspective" mode. The "Perspective" mode is the viewport that will be used almost all the time. Right click on the text "Perspective" to open up more options. You can access the "Wireframe" mode too. Under the "View" tab, you can access the Top, Front and Left viewports (But they are uncommonly used). The majority of the work will be done in the "Perspective" view. 

1.1 Customising Viewports (Locking Aspect Ratio for Videos) 

"Safe Frame" mode is for video specific reasons. E.g. Working with cinematics and wanting to lock a specific aspect ratio. To access the "Safe Frame", right click the text "Perspective" to open more options. 

2. Accessing Specific Features 

Specific features can be accessed usually in 2 or more ways. 

E.g. The "Wireframe" mode can be activated through the text "Perspective" and also in the "Display" tab along the top toolbar. Or you can just press the shortcut key "F3". 

3. Resolution 

The numbers to the right of the text "Perspective" is the resolution that the viewport is currently showing. If you right click the numbers, there are options to change resolution - The standard resolutions are shown but you can also insert custom numbers by clicking on the "Custom..." button. Again, if working on cinematics, altering resolution might go a long way. The resolution updates in real time. 

4. "By Name" Function 

Say you want to isolate a part of the environment e.g. a bunch of rocks around your level. For example, the entity you want to isolate is called DecoRockForest so if you type "Rock" in the search bar, everything in the level is hidden apart from the Rocks or any other entities that have the name "Rock" in it. Another example, if you want to isolate say an entity called the "Lighthouse", you would just type "Lighthouse" in the search bar and then everything is hidden apart from the Lighthouse, the vegetation and the terrain (I suppose this only works for entities, brushes etc). 

5. Selection 

There is a status bar at the bottom. On the very left, "No Selection" means that no objects are currently selected. As you select an object, it will change to "1 Object(s) Selected" or something. If you have multiple objects selected, it will also show how many objects are currently being selected. The "Lock Selection" button will lock the current objects that you have selected; and so then you can only work with the objects you have selected. 

6. Speed of the Perspective Viewport Camera 

The "Speed" input box shows the speed of the Perspective Viewport Camera. The default speed is 0.1 (it is pretty slow); if you wanted the Perspective Viewport Camera to move quicker, change the speed to 1.0 (increase the number e.g. 10 is even faster). For slower speeds, decrease it under 0.1 (e.g. 0.085, 0.05 etc). You can add custom parameters, add any number to adjust the speed. 

7. The Terrain Button 

On the right of the "Speed" input box, there is a icon. This is the "Terrain" button. It would have been better if I had discovered this earlier. Clicking on the icon (enabling the feature) means you can't go through the Terrain and to the water underneath it, it will be solid and impermeable. If the button is not on (disabling the feature) then you are able to go through the Terrain (and as you go through the Terrain, you'll find that the Terrain seems like a thin slice of pixel). This only works for terrains, not entity etc. 

8. AI Physics

Pressing Control + G will drop your character into the world and you're "in game". "In game" mode allows you to move around as if you were playing the game; all the entities are physicalised e.g. the boat is now physicalised and rocks to the currents of the water, the fish is also visibly swimming. If you turn it off, the boat stops moving and fish are nowhere to be seen. 

9. Go to Position 

When the dialog box opens, there are X, Y and Z co-ordinates; these are the exact world co-ordinates of where the camera is in this exact moment. 

If you press "Go to position" and input some numbers into the X, Y and Z co-ordinates, it will bring you to the exact world co-ordinates corresponding to the numbers you have put in. 

The co-ordinates are also shown in the statistics in the first line; "CamPos" means camera position, and X, Y, Z are the co-ordinates. If you copy the co-ordinates of the camera, move to another position, then press "Go to position" and enter the co-ordinates, you will find yourself back at the position you were currently in. 

10. Console 

To enable this, go to the "View" tab on the top toolbar and press "View Console". The console bar will appear on the very bottom of the game window. The console allows you to input comments 

If you don't know the comment that you want to use by heart, and you want to turn off the sound in the editor. Double click on the Input bar and a dialog box, called the "Console Variables" containing all the valid comments will pop-up. Or you could just press the "..." button on the bottom right-hand corner to access the same window. 

Once you're in the window, you don't have to type the comment into the Console, instead you could just change the values in the window.  On the bottom of the window, there is a search bar. 

Apart from the comments, the Console displays any errors, warnings or anything that is wrong with your level.