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I have put off any cryengine concentration till this day, so I have my fingers crossed that alot of bugs have been squashed as well.
It seems that even though they must not have the resources to be as aggressive as Epic with release advancements ( but who else does ). Yet it inspires confidence knowing that they are commited to big releases for the CryEngine Free SDK.

CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 Trailer - YouTube

crydev 3.4.4 release thread: ( usually has quick feedback on the hits and misses with each new release )
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=369&t=88043







.

Best day EVER.

Sweet I will have to check it out.


On a side note, I wonder if Crytek has any plans to create a node-based shader editor. Their current, rigid material editor is the only problem I have with CE.

As they say in this

video

, HOT .. DAMN!!

Originally Posted by teaandcigarettes

Sweet I will have to check it out.


On a side note, I wonder if Crytek has any plans to create a node-based shader editor. Their current, rigid material editor is the only problem I have with CE.

There was some indication in Warface files they may. But nobody knows. I personally start to doubt it ;p. At least they cloud release shader code source.

New filmic hdr tonemapper is finally working as it should(and even better ). Great.
DX11 do not work on Radeons. Don't try it.

Now im waiting for proper DX11 terrain solution with new tools, new texturing, and fixed accuracy problems ;p.

When I open up my 3.9.9 levels in the new editor everything is really out-of-whack. Anyone have any tips on how to get things looking how they should, I'm kinda out of my depth with all the time of day settings.

Originally Posted by Wesley

When I open up my 3.9.9 levels in the new editor everything is really out-of-whack. Anyone have any tips on how to get things looking how they should, I'm kinda out of my depth with all the time of day settings.

Go to ToD editor, and here is new section HDR (on left side), tweak it. Also tweak Night Sky (yeah), and Sun sections.

Yep, this is the build to go if you wanna get started with this engine.

I love the new Filmic HDR rendering, although you'll need to tweak your old ToD's and glossiness values of old materials.

So, SSR has ostensibly been moved up to DX11 only, and POM has moved down to DX9 and DX11. oooookayyyy.....

Also, Helder, what's changed about glossiness?

Originally Posted by iniside

There was some indication in Warface files they may. But nobody knows. I personally start to doubt it ;p. At least they cloud release shader code source.

Wait, I thought we could edit the HLSL of the shader at its core and change, as we see fit, isn't that the case anymore?

Also, I checked the current shaders they have in hopes of modding them to my own tastes, but they were encrypted, so I would very much be interested in 'source' shaders access.

Alright technical question time, If they added a shader editor, what would you do when you needed another parameter, add another gbuffer? Switch to forward rendering for those pixels?

I always thought their deffered rendering system a big reason why they don't allow for custom shaders, or more varied BRDFs, is that right?

Forgive me if I'm totally wrong on that one.

I don't have a DX11 card so I don't know, but how does UDK handle custom shaders in their deferred mode?

Originally Posted by Ace-Angel

Wait, I thought we could edit the HLSL of the shader at its core and change, as we see fit, isn't that the case anymore?

Also, I checked the current shaders they have in hopes of modding them to my own tastes, but they were encrypted, so I would very much be interested in 'source' shaders access.

Nope. Shader code is no longer accessible as it was in CE2. It's funny because you can download Nexuiz beta and look into shaders anyway..

I don't have a DX11 card so I don't know, but how does UDK handle custom shaders in their deferred mode?

Yes. I'm not big expert. But material shaders are build on top of system and communicated with base shaders. At least I think it work like that.

Asiade from that. I don't really need shader editor. But I'd like to have node material editor. With access to RGBA channels of files, less check boxes (that overrride diffrent slots for difrent reasons, making sometimes impossible to use certain combinations of textures), and some very basic math operations (Multiply, Lerp, Add), and UV mapping of course.

Originally Posted by Computron

I don't have a DX11 card so I don't know, but how does UDK handle custom shaders in their deferred mode?

Custom shaders as in materials in UDK? You can have any kind of material you want, with some restrictions:

Currently deferred shading will only be used in these conditions:
Material is opaque, uses the Phong lighting model, does not use subsurface scattering
The mesh uses one of the supported lighting channels (Dynamic, Cinematic 1-3)
The light is a movable point, spot or directional light using one of the supported lighting channels (Dynamic, Cinematic 1-3)

Additionally, material properties are restricted when lit with deferred shading:
Material diffuse values are clamped between 0 and 1
Material specular values are clamped between 0 and 1
Material specular power is clamped between 0 and 500

But their SSS solution in terms of color gradient scatter sucks, I cannot use it in it's current state :/

Why Crytek, WHY would you limit people doing stuff with shaders!

Originally Posted by iniside

Asiade from that. I don't really need shader editor. But I'd like to have node material editor. With access to RGBA channels of files, less check boxes (that overrride diffrent slots for difrent reasons, making sometimes impossible to use certain combinations of textures), and some very basic math operations (Multiply, Lerp, Add), and UV mapping of course.

This is pretty much all I'm hoping for. I'm not knowledgeable enough to make anything complex but it is a bit annoying that CE doesn't offer even such basic access to the materials and textures. I've been doing some big (size-wise) assets lately and it really pained me to see that I couldn't even scale my maps independently from one another other.

That said, I’m guessing there might be some technical reasons that prevent them from letting people fiddle too much.

It's indeed a bit limiting, if you wanted to do a complex scene out of one texture like tor made in UDK, it's impossible in CE3. But with that being said, would you? It can also actually be a good thing that artists have some restrains when it comes to shaders.

Shaders can get crazy expensive for performance if you overdo them, so having limitations like this can be a good thing, you just need to learn how to use them and just spend your scarce time making art and less fiddling around with shaders and mathematical operations.

Just curious, is there anything in specific that you guys can't do with this material editor?

Originally Posted by [HP]

Just curious, is there anything in specific that you guys can't do with this material editor?

Quite a lot of things actually

Being unable to change the tilling of individual texture maps is by far my biggest problem. Making a large mesh that uses a unique normal map and a tilling diffuse is currently impossible (at least in the SDK version). Scaling the spec independently from diffuse is also not supported and I often tend to do that as a cheap way of breaking up the repetition on large surfaces.

I can think of situations where having a direct access to RGBA channels and being able to use basic mathematical operations (Add/Power/Multiply) could allow me to get the same (or even more complex) visual results while using less texture maps. Deriving Spec from the Diffuse may not be a good practice, but can do a good job when you're dealing with simple materials such as wood or concrete. In other cases, creating a unique mask texture for vertex blending may not be necessary and similar results can be achieved by deriving one from the channels of diffuse, spec or normal map textures.

Overall, I think that the current setup is quite good when it comes to creating materials for assets that rely on unique texture maps - no setup necessary, just plug your maps in and you're good to go. But when you start making large assets that rely on tiling textures, I feel that's when the limitations become apparent.

You can tweak the tilling of every single map you input in the material editor. (Or at least the option is there if you click the little ">" symbol next to the input slot) but you're right, they locked the spec and bump tilling to the diffuse tilling parameters, so it doesnt work even if you force another tiling value manually in the spec slot.

What you could do tho, to break up your tillable textures and add more interest to it, is make use of the detail map function. You can use a RGBA texture as a "detail jack of all trades" texture. Just plug it into the detail map slot, tick "detail map" in the shader generation param, tweak the strength of each individually and the tilling.

R = Gloss Tilling Map
G = Normal Map X
B = Difuse Tilling Map
A = Normal Map Y

Thanks for the info Helder

Originally Posted by [HP]

You can tweak the tilling of every single map you input in the material editor. (Or at least the option is there if you click the little ">" symbol next to the input slot) but you're right, they locked the spec and bump tilling to the diffuse tilling parameters, so it doesnt work even if you force another tiling value manually in the spec slot.

Yes, that's what bothers me the most; the functionality appears to be there, but unfortunately it's unavailable right now. I will check later how the tilling works for the Opacity and Custom slots. The last time I tried they all seemed to be locked to the tilling value of the Diffuse. I recall it was possible to adjust the tiling of the mask used in the Blend Layer, by tweaking one of the values in the Shader Params, but that option doesn't appear to be there anymore (I'm on 3.3.9).

What you could do tho, to break up your tillable textures and add more interest to it, is make use of the detail map function. You can use a RGBA texture as a "detail jack of all trades" texture. Just plug it into the detail map slot, tick "detail map" in the shader generation param, tweak the strength of each individually and the tilling.

R = Gloss Tilling Map
G = Normal Map X
B = Difuse Tilling Map
A = Normal Map Y

Wow, thanks a lot for this I've been convinced that Detail slot is used purely for overlaying detail normals. The documentation doesn't seem to mention this unfortunately. http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SD...l+Bump+Mapping


Edit:
Hmm, the documentation seem to be correct after all. Just tried this and the only settings I see are the ones controlling U/V tilling and the intensity of the normals. I will have to get 3.4.0 and see if its any different.

Yep, you need 3.4. And yeah, the docs haven't been updated yet.

This version crashes for me as soon as i open the Forest level.

Do you have a AMD gfx card? I read a lot of people complaining about the same. Guess AMD guys will have to wait till next release, or keep on using 3.9

Yeah it's a AMD card.

Yeah must be that as I also have a crash on it with the ATI.

You can disable geometry instancing or run in DX9 mode. It will work. Unless you really need that SSR and Tesselation.