CryEngine 3 SDK — Requirements, How To Install, Documentation

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CryEngine 3 SDKJust recently CryEngine 3 SDK finally was released, as it was promised by Crytek early this year. CryEngine 3 SDK is a special, free for non-commercial usage, edition of the newest and most powerful Crytek's game engine. This article supposed to be your starter guide to the CE3 SDK, providing useful information on its system requirements, installation procedure and sources of available engine documentation.

But first I'd like to share my personal view on this SDK. Regardless the pretty large amount of documentation ( for the initial release, of course ) and WYSIWYP editor Sandbox 3, this game engine still isn't suitable for game development beginners, instead targeted at professional developers with some experience and amount of skills, be it small indie studios or hobbyists. CryEngine 3 SDK is not like a game constructor — for productive usage it requires some code writing, scripting, skills in level design and its compositing, etc. Please be aware of this, because after all CryEngine 3 SDK is just a modern and complex technology, that was maked available for us. If you're a novice developer and has some plan on serious usage of CE3 SDK — be prepared that it will be sometime pretty difficult and you'll need to learn much.

On the other hand, it isn't restricted to be curious and have a play with it — not every day game engine that costs thousands of $ become available to everyone, it's a great opportunity to check out modern technologies and workflow involved in AAA game development. Who knows? Maybe CryEngine 3 SDK experience will be helpful for you in some extent in the future and positively affect you as the game developer. I'll encourage you at least to take a look at SDK.

CryEngine 3 SDK — System Requirements


CryEngine 3 SDK RequirementsMany PC's for many years will be BSOD'ing when they hear the word "Crysis". Crytek have taken into account their mistake and made Crysis 2 ( and CryEngine 3 ) less demanding in terms of hardware ( cross-platform nature of the engine most likely played its role as well ). Still SDK requires up-to-date PC configuration to be comfortable to work with. For development with CryEngine 3 SDK you will need following configuration ( or better ) :
  • Supported OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7
  • 64-bit CPU ( multicore highly recommended )
  • 2 Gb RAM ( 4 Gb recommended )
  • Graphics card with support for Shader Model 3.0 ( Nvidia GeForce 6600 or better, or GFX cards from ATI/AMD in the same generation )
Obviously, better hardware is better  smile2. From my side I could recommend having 4-cores CPU, 8 Gb RAM and graphics card GeForce 460GTX / AMD HD4850 ( or better ).

End users ( gamers that will play your game ) have slightly lower requirements:
  • Supported OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7
  • 32-bit or 64-bit CPU ( multicore highly recommended )
  • 1 Gb RAM ( 2 Gb recommended )
  • Graphics card with support for Shader Model 3.0 ( Nvidia GeForce 6600 or better, or GFX cards from ATI/AMD in the same generation )
Crytek noted that CPU requirements highly dependable on the AI and physics usage by your game. The more AI and physics computation involved into gameplay, the faster CPU required. For original Crysis game minimal system requirements was such: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista) or better, Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista) or better, AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better.

Thus, CryEngine 3 isn't good solution to stick with for casual game development, because system requirements will be unreasonably high, while for modern 3D games its will be OK.

Also for CE3 SDK you will need additional software:
  • DirectX End-User Runtime ( August 2009 or later )
  • Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86 and x64)
  • Latest gaphics drivers

CryEngine 3 SDK — Online Only? Where Is Offline Mode?


For unknown reason Crytek decided that all CryEngine SDK users should be online and have permanent internet connection to work with it. Yep, that's it — you need to be online and login into your accout before you can access Sandbox 3 editor. Accordingly to official forum members posts, connection to the internet required all the time you're working with Sandbox 3 — if connection is unavailable, you will be unable to even save your work ( oh, that's just great! ).

How to deal with this restriction if you want to work away from the home, on the road, or somewhere without internet access is still unknown. Also there is some frightful theories that online authorization implemented to have control over your usage of CE3 and that Crytek possibly can revoke your access to your project if they decided so ( for example, if you violated EULA ). Will be there offline mode for CryEngine 3 SDK or not still is an open question — as far as I know, Crytek representatives yet didn't answered the questions regarding this issue in the Crydev forums. It's possible that online mode will be the only available legal way to work with SDK.

CryEngine 3 SDK — How To Install?


Now let's take a quick look on how to install CryEngine 3 SDK. Crytek has taken very interesting decision on distribution of the SDK — it's available in form of simple archive instead of classic installer. Thus you just need to download it form Crydev.net, unpack somewhere and there it is — installation is done! Sandbox 3 can be launched from Bin32 or Bin64 folders ( 32-bit and 64-bit versions correspondingly ).

To the point, if you're launched Sandbox 3 for the first time and see empty black screen — it's OK, just the empty scene. From this time you can load into editor demo level called "Forest", which can be accessed from File — Open... menu and СryEngineSDK/Game/Levels/Forest/Forest.cry

CryEngine 3 SDK Documentation


CryEngine 3 SDK - User GuideAnd finally — where to get  documentation about CE3 SDK. Perhaps the most important place for all CE3 developers is the freesdk.crydev.net, which contains all of the officially available docs for engine. Several categories has detailed instructions on how to work with different parts of the SDK, including the Sandbox 3, creating and managing different kinds of assets ( static models, vehicles, weapons ), technical documentation ( for programmers mainly ), and category for scripting in CryEngine 3.

Second source of knowledge about CE3 SDK — Wiki on the crydev.net website. Despite the fact that for now Wiki mainly focused on ModSDK rather that Free SDK, many of its content still can be applied to it. Also it's expected that with the release of Free SDK Wiki will be gradually filled and updated by this CE3 edition as well.

Third place where you can find useful information is the Crydev Forum. Official community of CryEngine 3 users from all over the world is the must-visit place for any CE3 SDK developer. Especially interesting looks section with Tutorials — don't forget to look into it.

The last, four source in our search for info — CryEngine 3 Cookbook, which was written by engine developers and contains over a hundred recipes that are ready-to-use inside of CryEngine 3 SDK. This book has some review on the pages of 3DG.Me, so be sure to check it out — CryEngine 3 Cookbook can be very helpful as the starter companion guide to the CE3 SDK.

I think this is all for now. You can always ask a question about CryEngine 3 SDK in our forum topic — I will try to be helpful as much as I can. Don't forget to check out my article about Sandbox 3 Editor Quick Tips, where gathered a number of tips and useful shortcuts for working inside of Sandbox 3.

And for the conclusion — video from the demo level Forest,which is supplied with SDK:

Average: 6.2 (56 votes)
About the Author: Sergey “Treidge” Danchenko

AvatarSergey "Treidge" Danchenko is a founder and the author of 3DG.Me blog, 3D Artist and game developer, Drupal web-developer and one-man-band with experience in some other areas. Personal credo — "If you want a thing done well, do it yourself". In times of great inspiration writes poetry and plays volleyball. Primary professional tools — Autodesk Maya & Mudbox, Adobe Photoshop. Wild about turkeys and parrots, loves music and videogames.  Thanks for reading and come again!

Comments

disculpa una pregunta es q yo ya lo descargue y cuando lo quiero instalar en bin64 en el editor sandbox le doy pero me sale un anuncio de algun error q no es una aplicacion win32 valida... y le doy despues en el q esta en bin32 en el mismo de editor sandbox y se me reinicia la compu ... q puedo hacer para instalarlo ? )=

Error "no es una aplicación win32 válida" aparece porque usted está probablemente tratando de ejecutar la versión de 64 bits de Sandbox en Windows de 32 bits. De 64-bit Sandbox requiere Windows 64-bit.

Lo he entendido bien? Cuando intenta ejecutar editor.exe desde bin32 se reinicie la Computadora. Si es así - me puede aconsejar:
1) Actualizar los controladores de la tarjeta de vídeo y DirectX.
2) Deshabilitar el reinicio automático en caso de error de Windows y ver qué tipo de error da lugar a un reinicio. Para obtener información sobre cómo desactivar el reinicio automático - ver aquí: http://www.softzone.es/trucos-windows-xp/¿como-desactivar-el-reinicio-del-sistema-en-caso-de-error/

ammmm perdona mi ignorancia amigo pero como puedo hacer para actualizar la tarjeta de video y el directx y como le ago para deshabilitar el reinicio ... perdona por hacer tanta pregunta /:

ooo ya vi el linck de como ajustar lo del reinicio es q al principio no me aparecio (:

Para actualizar el driver de la tarjeta de vídeo - usted necesita para descarga desde página web del fabricante e instalarlos.

Si la tarjeta gráfica Nvidia - http://la.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=la 
Si la tarjeta gráfica AMD / ATI - http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

DirectX se puede actualizar aquí: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/es-es/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=es

Lo siento por mi español, y estudió en la escuela y escribir con la ayuda de un intérprete red2

no se puede ya le puse en la opcion para q no reinicie mi compu preo cuando le vuelvo a dar en el sandbox se reinicia )= ...... y no te preocupes por tu español es bastante bueno (:

noo se puede ya le deshabilite la opcion de reinicio pero aun asi sigue reiniciandose )= ... no te preocupes si le puedo entender a tu español [:

no se puede ya le puse en la opcion para q no reinicie mi compu preo cuando le vuelvo a dar en el sandbox se reinicia )= ...... y no te preocupes por tu español es bastante bueno (:

No necesita ejecutar un Sandbox para desactivar el reinicio, si he entendido bien escrito. Inicio de Windows, Deshabilitar el reinicio automático, después ejecute Sandbox. En ese orden. Si el reinicio se desactiva - usted debe ver una pantalla azul con el error. Es decir, desactivar el reinicio automático no está relacionado con CryEngine 3 SDK - esta función de Windows.

Si el equipo aún se reinicia - Me temo que para encontrar el origen del error será difícil, porque no tenemos pistas. Intente actualizar los controladores de la tarjeta de vídeo y DirectX, ya que fue escrito con anterioridad.

Si esto no ayuda - la causa de reinicio repentino puede ser un sobrecalentamiento de la CPU o la tarjeta de video, o la escasez de la oferta. Me temo que en este caso no puedo dejar aquí, porque no ve a su computadora. Usted puede tratar de preguntar en la crydev.net foros, pero se requerirá de una descripción del error, que no podemos ver por el reinicio automático.

En general, muchos se quejan de que el CryEngine 3 SDK es todavía muy crudo y errores similares ocurren con mucha frecuencia.

ok muchas gracias por to ya vere q hacer [:

hola tengo una duda, quiero hacer mis propias texturas con el adobe photoshop, pero hay muchismos a descargar y no se cual es el correcto para el cryengine. bueno si me pueden responder, cuanto antes, o mandarme un mail, saludos gente, buena pagina

Hola, amigo. Si he entendido bien, usted necesita un plugin para Adobe Photoshop, que se llama CryTif. Se puede descargar aquí: CryTIF Descargar

Las instrucciones de instalación se puede encontrar aquí: Installing the CryTIF Plugin

Instrucciones de uso - aquí: Using CryTif

si, gracias, pero que photoshop instalo? el adobe photosho cs3? o el cs5? se el plugin se llama crytiff, y lo tengo, pero mi duda es con respecto al photoshop, en sintesis, no se cual descargar de tantos photoshop q andan dando vueltas por la red, gracias por contestarme tan rapido, jeje muy atento de tu parte.

CryTif soporta Photoshop desde Photoshop 6 o superior, pero sólo versiones de 32 bits. He instalado en Photoshop CS5.5 - todo funciona. Si no puede descargar una gran cantidad - usted puede tratar de instalar CryTIF en Photoshop 6 o Photoshop CS2, pero es bastante viejo, yo le aconsejaría a buscar Photoshop CS5 - que puede tener amigos o conocidos.

Que es compatible con cualquier versión de los siguientes: Photoshop 6, Photoshop 7, Photoshop CS, Photoshop CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5 y CS5.5 (la más reciente). Por lo tanto, yo recomendaría para conseguir CS5.5 como el más nuevo y más funcional.

muchismas gracias por tu tiempo. me funciono a la perfeccion!!! gracia, y me voy a crear una cuenta en esta web, nos vemos y de nuevo muchisimas gracias!!!

i have this error libtiff64 is missing from computer what does this meen

Do you have a libTIFF64.dll file in CryEngine 3 SDK/Bin64 directory? Error says that it is missing.

I'm having trouble using both the launcher and editor. when I try to start it up the editor it says "Error loading DLL: CryRenderD3D11.dll, error code 183. And on the launcher it says I need a AMD RADEON HD6250, Graphics id = 0x9604
"[vender id = 0x1002, device

You need to update your DirectX to the latest version, that should fix the problem.

Hey, I have updated and deleted + re installed DirectX , as well as getting doing the same for the Visual C++ it runs on, as well as the same with the latest CryEngine 3 SDK, but it still just drops out at the launch phase, just as it says 'login' in the loading status. I have also tried turning off AVG antivirus completely, but still with no good results.
Please can you give me a step by step guide to getting this right? the only other solution i saw involved turning off antivirus, deleting things using cmd. that i wasnt sure about and downloading from mediafire with antivirus still off, so i thought I would ask here first!
Cheers.

my comp has , 1 gb ram , 128 mb intel mobile 945 video card , 1,8 Ghz dual core duo cpu .. to work with this program is just a dream for me(

my system is Core i3 4gb ram 1 gb card Amd ATI. I just installed my windows 7 again ..and before i used cryengine and it was working fine but now when i try to open it . it simply doesnt open like it opens the splash screen and then it doesnt go till the account login and disappears...? please help

Hello, i was having the same issue. My problem was that my antivirus blocked CE3 from opening the port and connecting to the Auth. server. Mine would have the splash, but when the login should have popped up, it just went away. Sooooo you might want to check your AV.

I went to (have to create an account to "post that many links" even tho it was just one link to crydev.net... if youre going to sandbag me, at least say " You have to be logged in to post links" instead of " You have to be logged in to post that many links" BUT anyways, i found this :

"Network information for CryDev Login if behind a firewall

I.P. address & port used: 62.67.9.135:25323"

might need that bit of info. Cheers random person on a site ive never been to until now. baha

where should i set up Playup directories to export Sketchup models to so i can use them in Cryengine? I can't seem to find the folder that holds the worldspace objects like buildings, etc.

when i try to epen it in the bin32 folder i keep getting this error "The Procedure entry point InitalizeSRWLock could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll" whats going on how can i fix this

I've created video animation rendered by Cryengine in Realtime. it's very powerful engine to produce Animation in fast way!
SS :  

WATCH HERE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDf6y_wzUPc

more about my artwork visit : https://www.artstation.com/artist/baiquni

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