Crytek has announced that CryEngine 5.6 - the latest version of its game engine and development environment is now available with over 1,000 changes and includes production-proven features which have been used to deliver Hunt: Showdown. The features new in the release – including support for area lights and a full-body ragdoll IK system Highlights
In-Editor Project Management
The Sandbox Editor now controls project creation and management, making getting started with a new CRYENGINE project faster and giving developers more flexibility with this new streamlined and improved workflow.
Micro-facet Multi-layer Materials
This new feature advances the visual reproduction of metals and gives more artistic control over the creation of a range of materials. By describing materials as a stack of layers of varying thickness, each with different optical properties, users can, for instance, model a wet surface by defining a slightly absorptive layer on top, and spatially or temporally varying the thickness of that layer.
Area Lights
Area lights deliver a better representation of how light behaves than traditional punctual light sources. CRYENGINE’s new implementation makes use of pre-computed textures, which will calculate and model area lights far more accurately. It also allows for more flexibility when defining different kinds of light shapes. As of right now, the area lights are a part of the Point Light Component, so if you have point lights in your scene, you can easily change them to area lights
Tessellated Particle Ribbons
The Render Ribbons feature has a new option called Tessellated. This enables the graphics card’s tessellation stage to smooth the joints in ribbon particles by generating new polygons in a curved shape which is also adaptive to distance. This feature benefits ribbon effects, including trails from flying objects and organic objects like worms or vines.
Inter-Entity Constraint Points Storage
This feature is designed to create gears, but also has other functions. It allows users to manually specify which entity will ‘own’ the constraint point, and since each constrained entity can have its own constraint point in place, it’s possible to create objects like belts with this feature.
Pressurized Closed Buoyant Cloth
Closed cloth shapes can now have internal pressure based on the current shape volume in this extension to the existing cloth entity.
Custom-Mesh Ropes
Ropes can now use bones and skinning and can be built from custom *.cgf meshes, repeated several times. This enables a chain ‘rope’ to be created from a single link and allows for the rapid creation of vines or complex cables that fit naturally in the environment.
Full-Body Ragdoll IK
Ragdoll IK is a physics-aware, energy-based, full-body IK, which tries to satisfy constraints imposed on the physics skeleton with minimum effort energy-wise. The effect is similar to applying physics impulses to characters, except the results are computed instantly, without the physics thread running.
CRIWARE ADX2 Implementation
CRYENGINE is audio middleware agnostic, and we’re proud to integrate support for CRIWARE ADX2, a comprehensive and easy-to-use audio system. If your team is already familiar with ADX2, the transition to CRYENGINE is simple. Discover more about CRIWARE ADX2 here!
Behavior Tree UI
The new Behavior Tree UI is a GUI interface which enables users to quickly create complex behavior trees for AI, bringing NPCs and enemies to life. This tool was developed by the Hunt: Showdown team, bringing yet more production-proven technology to the Engine.
Real-time ACE Editing Feedback
Users can now preview a middleware event in the right pane of the Audio Controls Editor, and without the need to firstly connect it to a corresponding trigger, so improving CRYENGINE’s audio pipeline with instant feedback.
Check CRYENGINE 5.6 technology showcase.
Availability
CryEngine 5.6 is available for Windows 7+. Use of the editor is free, but Crytek charges 5% of the revenue from any commercial project using the engine after the first $5,000/year. More information about version 5.6 here!
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