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Next Generation Real-Time Renderer

Our renderer provides seamless support for both indoor and outdoor

environments on DirectX9 and 10, as well as support for next generation consoles

such as the Xbox360 and PS3 (under development).

Real Time Lighting and Dynamic Soft

Shadows

CryENGINE 2 features natural looking

light sources, and creates soft shadows

that dynamically respond to natural

movements. It includes high-resolution,

perspective correct and volumetric

smooth-shadow implementations.

Volumetric, Layer and View Distance

Create clouds or fog banks which can

hug the ground and realistically reduce

both visibility and contrast, and

properly interact with both dynamic

lights and shadows, add depth and

dimension to a landscape by reducing

scene contrast and clarity for distant

landmarks.

Terrain 2.5D Ambient Occlusion Maps

On a per pixel level, approximates the amount of ambient (fill) light reaching an

object (static or dynamic) depending on the amount of ambient occlusion created

by the surrounding foliage and structures.

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Normal Maps and Parallax Occlusion

Maps

Normal maps are used to project the

contour details of a highly detailed

object onto a low polygon model by

using a high frequency compressed

(3DC/BC5) texture in place of the

polygon
s surface normal in lighting

calculations. CryEngine2 also supports

parallax occlusion mapping to give a

greater sense of depth to a surface

texture applied to a polygon, such as

could be used to realistically emphasize

the relief surface structure of a brick

wall, for example.

Pre-calculate the amount of ambient

(fill) light which will be applied to indoor

surfaces, to improve the quality of

lighting when applying real-time per-

pixel lighting and shadows. This means

the current light position and color can

be dynamically added to the fill light

intensity applied to illuminate surfaces

in interior spaces.

Subsurface Scattering

Simulates the diffusion and diffraction

of light transmitted through translucent

objects, like ice and jade; it can also be

used to create natural looking skin or

vegetation.

Eye Adaptation & High Dynamic Range

(HDR) Lighting

Eye Adaptation is used to simulate the

human eye
s adaptation to sudden or

extreme changes in lighting conditions,

like dark indoor environments suddenly

transitioning to bright sunny outdoor

environments, while HDR allows scenes

with extreme brightness and contrast

ranges to be more realistically

rendered.

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Light Beams & Shafts

These are used to create visually

stunning light beams and shadows

when light intersects with solid or highly

detailed geometry, and can generate

godray effects under water.

Advanced Shader Technology

A script system used to combine

textures and math in different ways to

create unique effects such as cloaked,

wet, muddy, and/or frozen surfaces

which can be layered together and

combined with more basic shaders such

as metallic and glassy and other visual

effects. Supports real time per-pixel

lighting, bumpy reflections, refractions,

volumetric glow effects, animated

textures, transparent computer

displays, windows, bullet holes, and

shinny surfaces. Included are many

unique new shaders which take

advantage of the efficiencies of the

unified shader architecture of DirectX

10.

High Quality 3D Ocean Technology

Dynamically modifies the ocean surface based on wind and wave direction,

generating shoreline soft-clipping breakers automatically where the ocean meets

the shore, depending on the shoreline contour and ocean depth, while our caustic

simulation creates realistic looking moving shadows and highlights in underwater

environments.

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Motion Blur & Depth of Field

Motion Blur is used to simulate the visual effect of using a slow shutter speed

when tracking fast moving objects or making quick camera movements. Blur can

be applied both to individual objects (object based motion blur), and/or to an

entire scene (screen based motion blur), while Depth of Field can be used to focus

the viewer
s eye on a nearby object while subtly blurring objects in front or

behind the point of focus.

Terrain LOD Management Feature

This feature allows optimal usage of CPU and memory to display closer objects

and terrain at a fine level of detail while enabling long view distances of over 8

kilometers.

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Polybump
2

Polybump 2 can be used as either as a standalone utility, or fully integrated

with other tools such as 3DS Max. This tool creates a high quality surface

description that allows quick extraction of surface features like normal maps

(tangent-space or object-space), displacement maps, unoccluded area direction,

accessibility and other properties. The extracted information can be used to

render Low poly models with surface detail almost making them look like the

high-poly models but it will render much faster. The data is stored in a

intermediate file format so it can be exported in different ways without doing the

computation again. Very high polygon counts (e.g. 10 million triangles) are

processed quite quickly.

Integrated Multithreaded Physics Engine

Can be applied to almost everything in a level, including trees and vegetation, to

realistically model reactions to forces like wind currents, explosions, gravity,

friction and collisions with other objects, without the need of specialized

coprocessing hardware. Also allows for character to ragdoll and ragdoll to

character transitions.

Advanced Rope Physics

Bendable vegetation which responds to wind, rain or character movement,

realistically interactive rope bridges, and physically driven creature tentacle

animations are just some of the uses to which we
ve put our rope physics

technology.

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Interactive and Destructible Environments

Dynamically physicallize (using previously defined breaking or shattering

characteristics) any arbitrary environmental object or shape, in order to destroy

buildings, trees, or other objects, and then further interact with the resulting

pieces.

Character Animation System

Our new character animation system considerably advances the state of the art in

real-time human, model and vehicle animation. A fully integrated character

editor allows animations to be previewed inside of CryENGINE Sandbox2, while

our extremely powerful animation graph allows an animator to visually define the

animation states of a character, and the allowable transitions between those

states.

Character Individualisation System

The character pipeline uses a robust character attachment system

which allows for attachment of skinned, animated, or physicallized

attachments to the skeleton or polygonal faces of a character, to

the extent you can even replace entire body parts such as heads,

hands, or upper and lower body. A hardware based shape

deformation system allows flexible variation of the character

meshes. The system supports manually and even procedurally

generated examples to ensure a small memory footprint. An

additional variation system based on shaders is use for dirt, decals

for clothes, and camouflage shaders for the skin.

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Parametric Skeletal Animation

By blending example-motions based on user-defined

parameters, we obtain responsive interactive control

over a character with a focus on believability and the

ability to adapt automatically and naturally to the

changing circumstances of a game environment. This

enables the character to travel at different speeds,

follow paths where the direction changes smoothly or

suddenly, move uphill or downhill, dynamically blend in

varying amounts of hit reaction animation, and/or

change the style of locomotion.

Procedural Motion Warping

Procedural algorithms like CCD-IK, analytic IK,

example-based IK or physical simulations are used to

augment pre-authored animations. All procedural

methods have in common that a computer procedurally

follows the steps in an algorithm to generate artificial

motions. To avoid the typical computer-generated look

when combining artificial and captured animations, we

use a warping technique that can preserve the style and

the content of the base motion, despite the

transformations needed to comply with the constraints.

High Quality Animation Compression

Using our adaptive key frame compression technology, we can adjust the

compression level to match the fidelity needed for any given animation while

saving at least 90% of the RAM that would otherwise be consumed, without

significant loss of motion fidelity.

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Integrated CryENGINE Sandbox2 Editor

Run time engine is fully integrated into the CryENGINE Sandbox2 editor to give

designers What you see is what you play functionality.

Embedded Facial Animation Editor

The powerful new Facial Animation editing tool uses audio waveform analysis

technology to automatically extract phonemes and other key features of speech in

order to animate facial features and provide convincing lip sync. The sophisticated

and convenient multiple joystick-based user interface allows expressions to be

defined and combined in many powerful ways, then animated quickly and

intuitively. Expressions and animations can be created once, and then seamlessly

applied to multiple models. In conjunction with this system, a video tracking tool

can be used to capture movements from an actor
s face using a standard video

camera, and these movements transferred directly to the desired facial model in

the editor, where the expressions and movements can be combined with the lip

sync and/or further edited by an animator.

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Integrated Vegetation and Terrain Cover Generation System

Allows procedurally placed vegetation to behave according to natural rules about

the desirable and allowable ground slope, surface altitude, and allowable plant

density to create believable natural environments at run time without requiring

the level designer to custom place every blade of grass or tree. Vegetation can

also absorb some color from the underlying terrain texture, to fit more naturally

into the environment.

Advanced Terrain System with Integrated Voxel Objects Technology

Allows designers to place overhanging cliffs, caves or tunnels in their levels, and

allows them to adjust the terrain detail on a per-sector basis to reduce overall

polygon counts.

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Flow Graph

A visual editing system which allows designers to set up events, triggers, and

other game logic by connecting various logic boxes to each other with lines

between their input and output gates, and defining their properties and state

changes. This allows designers to build complex levels without needing to write

C++ code or LUA scripts.

Advanced Soft Particle System and Integrated FX Editor

Simplifies the creation of extremely complex explosion, fire, smoke and other

special effects using next generation soft particles, which in turn can be affected

by collisions with any other objects, apply or receive forces such as wind or

gravity, and can interact with lights and shadows.

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Dynamic Time of Day Settings

Change the time of day dynamically during a game mission to reflect lighting

conditions and sun/moon positions over any predefined 24 hour cycle, from a blue

and foggy morning sunrise to a fiery orange sunset to a clear cold moonlit night.

Road and River Tools

These integrated tools greatly simplify the process of locally smoothing and

leveling terrain and applying a tiled texture for the creation of paths, roads, or

rivers through rugged landscapes.

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Vehicle Editor

Allows designers to setup a vehicle
s damage system, including defining

component damage and damage effects, define passenger seats and their

connection to such vehicle features as the ability to control tank turrets and/or

attached weapons, and provides full control over engine and physics parameters.

It also exposes control of a vehicle
s exhaust and surface particle effects.

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Sound and Music

The sound system in CryEngine2 introduces many new features and

improvements with its data-driven concept. Each sound carries its own

specification with it, so sound designers are in full control of the final quality of

the sound, and sounds are used consistently throughout the game.

Data-driven Sound System

Complex sounds can be easily created and delivered with studio quality while

supporting any available surround sound speaker configuration. Multi-platform

compatibility is guaranteed by FMOD
s included sound library.

Interactive Dynamic Music System

Improved playback of music tracks by specially defined logic that reacts to any

desired game event in order to give the player a movie-like sound track

experience.

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Dynamic World Sounds

Any physical contact can spawn a

unique sound controlled by various

parameters such as material type,

object type, mass, and speed. This

technique provides non-repetitive and

responsive audio feedback to

movement in an interactive game

world.

In Game Mixing

Integrated editor functionality and

advanced sound specification tools

provide efficient mixing by connecting

to a running game instance on various

target platforms. This constantly

guarantees a well mixed game in every

development stage by allowing review

of the results in either the game itself,

or in other editor modes, such as

sounds triggered by animations from

within the character editor, for

example.

Environmental Audio

This feature allows a sound designer to achieve a dense sound impression by

accurately reproducing sounds from nature, with seamless blending between

different environments, for example the effect of moving from an interior to an

exterior location.

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Advanced AI System

CryENGINE 2 has a flexible and easily customizable AI system which handles both

character and vehicle behaviors, it fully supports the complex requirements of the

character locomotion system to animate bipedal characters in a believable

fashion, and is fully integrated into the CryENGINE Sandbox2 editor.

LUA Script Driven AI System

Allows complex AI behaviors to be created without requiring new C++ code,

including extending state machine behaviors from LUA scripts.

Dynamic Path Finding

Advanced 2D and 3D algorithms allow the AI navigation paths to be modified in

real time in response to events which create new or destroy existing paths, a

critical feature for creating believable AI in a highly interactive and destructible

environment.

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Smart Objects

Provides an easy way for level designers to connect specialized animations to

particular objects in the level, so that the character animations and objects are

properly aligned at the start and end of the animations, and the correct animation

sequence plays.

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Performance Analysis

Powerful instrumentation features allows the developer

to analyze engine performance in real time, create

detailed memory usage reports, and run automated

walk-throughs of each level to get consistent test

results from build to build.

Creating streaming videos or still images from within the game is made easier by

the inclusion of specific console commands which can output a scene at any

arbitrary screen resolution and/or aspect ratio, including generating autostitched

panoramic views for use on 360 degree projection video displays.

Modular C++ Design

Entirely written in modular C++, fully documented and commented, and divided

into logical separate DLL
s, you can use what you need as-is, and modify or

replace only the components in our engine that you particularly require to

customize for your individual project requirements.

Multithreading Support

To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive

subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been

re-written to support multi-threading.

Resource Compiler

Assets are compiled from their original formats to an optimized platform

dependent one by the resource compiler at project build time. This allows making

global changes (e.g. mipmap computation, mesh stripification) to the output data

depending on presets and target platforms without affecting the final level loading

times, or requiring developers to keep multiple versions of assets on hand for

different platforms.

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Assets can be loaded on demand at run time to allow for larger levels and

increased complexity, while reducing the amount of available system RAM

required.

Network Client and Server System

CryENGINE 2 has a totally new, multi-threaded networking system which

manages all connections for multiplayer mode. It features a highly reliable, low-

latency, low bandwidth system based on client/server architecture using

advanced range encoding based compression algorithms.