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Screamfeeder · 12-14-2007, 02:26 AM

I just so happen to be in a rather unique position to give some basic thoughts on both the CRYENGINE2 Sandbox editor and the Unreal 3.0 engine.

I am currently doing modeling work on the Mechwarrior:Living Legends full conversion mod which is using the Cry2 engine, and I also work at a school that uses the Unreal 3.0 engine.

So far my general thoughts are that the Cry2 engine is incredibly more deep in terms of where you can take the technology, whereas Unreal 3 just built upon the very excellent and versatile Unreal2.5 core and added a few bonuses (per-pixel lighting, HDR support).

What really swings the contest in favor of the Cryengine is the liberal use of voxels.

For those that have no idea what I am talking about, a voxel is basically a 3D pixel that generates volumes based on it's relation to other voxels in a 3D space. If that went over your head, just think of an ice-cream scoop taking a chunk out of space. The ice-cream scoop is a voxel(or made up of many voxels).

Why is this so cool?

In the past, if you wanted to create an interior environment through any sort of generated terrain, you need to create a mesh in a 3D program and use that shape to cut out your interior from the terrain.

With voxels, you can simply designate two spots, and using a multitude of variables in the engine itself, create your interior environment on the fly. In the Cry2 engine, this generates all the needed height-maps and texture splitting with no need to modify the terrain after the fact.

Very handy.

One of the other bonuses from the Cry2 engine is support for advanced lighting techniques like subsurface scattering. Think light through a semi-transparent glass and the shadows/highlights it generates. As far as I know, the only way this can be done in Unreal3 is using the old shadow map fakery.

If you got any questions about the work flow or anything else let me know. If I don't have the answer right away I have tons of people working with both engines that will.

12-14-2007, 02:26 AM	#2 (permalink)
Screamfeeder I MAEK ART!! Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 1,700 +69 Internets	I just so happen to be in a rather unique position to give some basic thoughts on both the CRYENGINE2 Sandbox editor and the Unreal 3.0 engine. I am currently doing modeling work on the Mechwarrior:Living Legends full conversion mod which is using the Cry2 engine, and I also work at a school that uses the Unreal 3.0 engine. So far my general thoughts are that the Cry2 engine is incredibly more deep in terms of where you can take the technology, whereas Unreal 3 just built upon the very excellent and versatile Unreal2.5 core and added a few bonuses (per-pixel lighting, HDR support). What really swings the contest in favor of the Cryengine is the liberal use of voxels. For those that have no idea what I am talking about, a voxel is basically a 3D pixel that generates volumes based on it's relation to other voxels in a 3D space. If that went over your head, just think of an ice-cream scoop taking a chunk out of space. The ice-cream scoop is a voxel(or made up of many voxels). Why is this so cool? In the past, if you wanted to create an interior environment through any sort of generated terrain, you need to create a mesh in a 3D program and use that shape to cut out your interior from the terrain. With voxels, you can simply designate two spots, and using a multitude of variables in the engine itself, create your interior environment on the fly. In the Cry2 engine, this generates all the needed height-maps and texture splitting with no need to modify the terrain after the fact. Very handy. One of the other bonuses from the Cry2 engine is support for advanced lighting techniques like subsurface scattering. Think light through a semi-transparent glass and the shadows/highlights it generates. As far as I know, the only way this can be done in Unreal3 is using the old shadow map fakery. If you got any questions about the work flow or anything else let me know. If I don't have the answer right away I have tons of people working with both engines that will.