This is it, this is for me one of the most exciting times of my life and I couldn’t be any happier.

Early this month I said goodbye to my good friends and colleagues at Crytek in Germany, whom I lived through some really good times that I’ll remember fondly forever and I’ll be relocating to sunny California very soon. I’ll be joining the Next-Gen MMO team at Blizzard Entertainment, and I’ll be working with some of the best talent this industry has to offer, among them are good friends that I’ve known for quite a while from the internet communities.

I could’nt be more excited about this, I keep expecting to wake up and realize this was all a dream… here’s hoping I wont and I’ll keep on dreaming! :p ‘Cos that’s what’s it all about folks, keep dreaming and working hard on the things you’re most passionate about, good things happen to those who work hard and remember that obstacles are no more than those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals, so keep focused!

Live the dream.

This Overgrown Swamp scene is set in China Town within New York. In the universe of Crysis 3, the city is now encompassed in one big dome, accelerating the growth of wild life, specially vegetation.

A mixture of different themes is something that is always hard to nail, and once again in this level there’s quite a few different themes being thrown into the blender. The level needs to feel like it’s set in NY, at all times, it’s two sub-themes are china town (therefor remains of the old city still need to be scattered all over the place) and the second sub-theme is obviously a Swamp by night.
Achieving the correct balance of “theming” was key, throw too much chinese signs and lamps, and it’s going to feel like the level is set in china, put too much vegetation and the level will feel too bushy and messy.

Sorting all of the above problems was probably one of my biggest task and responsibility in this level, making sure the level has the correct balance of detail, composition, and let the art embrace gameplay guiding the player properly throughout, etc. As level artist, once again serving as the hub, I was also in charge of communicating with the art director, and the artists in charge of making the vegetation and other pieces to achieve the best result possible within the time constrains we had.

I also did some miscellaneous assets and textures, painted and placed all the terrain textures, road textures, decals, and modeled a few props like the Chinese signs and awnings, etc.

I’m back yet again, with more tutoring stuff for CryEngine3, this time around something aimed at artists and for those who want to master the CryEngine3 Material Editor.

Materials has always been a topic that I’m extremely found of, there’s something awesome about going in there and fiddling with the shader and the material editor to get to that specific look you’re aiming for. In this videos, we’ll cover a wide range of materials, from metalic, to wood, cloth, etc, covering every little step of the way, from setting up the material, painting a basic texture, and further tweaks of the material to make it look pimp!
I also cover a few extra things that I’m sure it will help a lot of people, stuff like using an edge decal texture to get rid of ugly hard edges, scrolling textures, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Decals, etc.

Check out Eat3D’s post about the whole bundle with more info, and detailed description of each video:
http://eat3d.com/blog/eat-3d/3-new-dvd-releases-cryengine-3-materials-vol-1-3-introduction-and-application

I want to thank Manuel “katzeimsack” Virks for inspiring me to do this tutorials in the first place, he’s one of the most talented folks I ever worked with, check out his website!

Volume 1:

- Getting Started and Folder Structure
- Overview of the UI
- Customizing the editor
- Viewports
- A quick look at entities
- Overview at panels
- Working with objects
- Your first level – Terrain
- Your first level – Lighting the scene
- Your first level – Terrain
- Your first level – Modeling the terrain
- Your first level – Detailing and painting the terrain
- Your first level – Adding Vegetation
- Your first level – Vegetation details
- Your first level – Detail brush placement
- Your first level – Environment tab
- Your first level – Fog Volumes
- Your first level – Water Volumes
- Your first level – Terrain

Volume 2:

- Your first level – Particles
- Your first level – Boids and Visual Dynamics
- Your first level – Decals and Roads
- Your first level – Prefabs and Archetypes
- Your first level – Doors
- Your first level – Ropes
- Your first level – Sounds
- Your first level – Layers and Organization
- Your first level – Solids
- Your first level – Creating a cave with voxels
- Your first level – VizAreas
- Your first level – Environment cubemaps
- Your first level – Clouds
- Your first level – Detailed lighting

Volume 3:

- Creating a simple interior level
- Creating and adding custom decals
- Creating and adding custom roads
- Creating and adding custom terrain layers and textures
- Deferred Lighting
- Lightbox
- Environment Cubemaps and Probes
- Custom terrain heightmap
- CryTIFF Exporter
- Materials
- Advanced Vegetation
- Creating a prop – Modeling and preparation
- Creating a prop – Materials and Textures
- Creating a prop – Proxy and LODs
- Creating a prop – Material variations and Tips
- Particles overview

I didn’t mention how to instal the exporter plugins in this tutorial, if you know how to, it’s very well documented in the CryDev SDK confluence page, just follow the link: http://sdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Installing+Exporter+Plugins

PS. In the end of the tutorial, I forget to mention the LOD debug command, which is e_debugdraw3 (You’ll see a 1/3 on the objects pivot, meaning you are currently seeing LOD 1 out of 3)