Their free CryEngine SDK will continue, says the studio. More details about this ”Engine-as-a-Service” program will be given in the near future. Subscriptions start in May.
It will be offered to any size developer looking to get their coding hands on CryEngine, and includes the recently unveiled upgrades such as Physically Based Shading.
It seems the war between engine middleware providers is hotting up and the biggest winners will be the small independent studios who can now afford to experiment with triple-A engine technology. Crytek unveiled the highlights of their latest updates to CryEngine 3 at GDC this week. CryEngine now also supports Linux.
▪ Physically Based Shading – In contrast to traditional observational based shading seen in most real-time game engines, CRYENGINE’s brand new Physically Based Shading model simulates the interaction between light and materials using real world physics.
▪ Geometry Cache – Leveraging the power of today’s new hardware, CRYENGINE computes efficient, cache-based animations to realize the most complex simulations (cloth, explosions, fluid dynamics) normally only possible in offline rendering.
▪ Character Technology – The CRYENGINE update unites the most scalable, technically-advanced animation and rendering systems to deliver astonishingly realistic characters for games in real-time. Lifelike iris parallax mapping allows for a truly realistic eye representation, while new unified shaders for character shadows and hair add to the possibilities.
▪ Image Based Lighting – Image Based Lighting brings lighting and render consistency to all materials. CRYENGINE’s shading model uses advanced BRDF values and normalization of specular highlights to render even the most complex lighting situations.
Visit the official CryEngine website for more.
