Crytek has announced the arrival of a new update to CryENGINE 3. The CryENGINE 3 SDK now presents users with new tools to tap into, including revamped DirectX 11 tessellation, advanced character rendering options, improved AI system and much more.

Among the key enhancements free CryENGINE 3 SDK users can look forward to in version 3.4 are:

·         Revamped DirectX 11 Tessellation
DX11 support and tessellation has come a long way since Crysis 2. Phong, PN triangles and displacement maps, along with no need for pre-tessellated assets, makes CryENGINE’s DX11 support among the best in the industry.

·         Multi-layer Navigation Mesh
The multi-layer navigation is a powerful new and easy-to-use navigation system that AI agents utilize to path-find through game maps.

·         Improved Skin Rendering and Eye Shader
New scattering approach gives more realistic rendering with fewer artifacts. New settings, checkboxes and sliders for things like oiliness, iris control, colors, pupil dilatation, tessellation and parallax support make CryENGINE character rendering more advanced and customizable than ever before.

·         Advanced/Improved/Extended Glass Shader
The glass shader is a specialized tool for rendering glass-based surfaces. It can represent a wide range of glass types, including regular windows, stained glass, leaded glass, beveled glass, some crystal types and some types of transparent plastics as well. The improved glass shader now also boasts features such as a dirt layer designed to produce extremely realistic-looking glass surfaces complete with dust and dirt, differential fog and refractionblur.

On top of these key updates, version 3.4 of the free CryENGINE 3 SDK addresses a number of bugs from previous releases and gives developers access to further improvements that include:

–       Improved glass rendering
–       Geometric light beams
–       Point light shafts
–       Time of day based filmic HDR tone mapping
–       Curves and key tangents for time of day
–       User controlled per cascade shadow bias through time of day
–       Improved transitions between levels of detail
–       Volumetric fog features extended and improved
–       Improved distance cloud shading

Crytek has released the Cryengine 3 SDK to the public. The SDK was rumoured to be available for a long time now after Crysis 2 came out. “With the release of our SDK we encourage creators to try out CryENGINE 3 and hope it will lead to new companies being formed and using our engine. More importantly we expect to increase the talent pool for CryENGINE developers, as well as boosting our online community of users. This SDK contains more toys than we’ve ever released before – it empowers people to create whole new games from scratch, not just mod Crytek’s own games, so we encourage all aspiring and indie developers to try it out.” said Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE.

“For those who want to make the step into commercial gaming, we’ll offer a royalty-only license model for games made with this SDK, where Crytek require only 20% of the developer’s revenues from the commercial launch of their game.”

This allows modders to do modifications to Crysis 2 and create original content.

Download from http://www.crydev.net and http://www.mycryengine.com

Thanks, Joystiq.