Cryengine 2 Mapping tutorial

Hello and welcome to my Crysis basic mapping tutorial. In this tutorial i will explain the basics of mapping for crysis.

First of all, install the sandbox editor by going to your crysis folder and look for the sandbox folder with the .msi installer and run it. This only applies to the demo version of the game, for the retail, check your game disc. Then open up the sandbox (you can find the exe file in ./Crysis SP Demo/Bin32/editor.exe). I will first explain how to navigate the editor.

stuff > Stuff that is underlined is accesibly trough the top toolbar of the current window
stuff > Italic stuff means that you have to press that key on the keyboard or mouse

Navigation

You can move around by just using the standard movement keys:

• W to move forwards
• S to move backwards
• A to move (strafe) left
• D to move (strafe) right

By using the Shift button, you will move faster. You can allso look around by holding the Right Mousebutton, pan by clicking your scrollwheel and zoom by scrolling

Your first mapping babysteps

After playing around with the movement, press File>New.

• Level Name: Input the name of your map here
• Terrain:
• Use Terrain: Leave this checked, otherwise you wont have any terrain to work with :p
• Heightmap Resolution: This will define the resolution of the heightmap (allso plays a big role when importing heightmaps)
• Meters per unit: This will be multiplied with the heightmap resolution to get the final map size

You will get an empty map where you can paint your terrain in several ways:

Automatic Random Terrain Generation
You can access this dialog by pressing Terrain>Edit Terrain and then Tools>Generate Terrain. This dialog box is prett self explanitory: you input your needed settings and the editor will generate some basic terrain for you. But here is a rundown of all the functions:

• Feature Size: determines amount of land created
• Bumpiness/Noise: determines the degree bumpiness or deformation of the surface
• Detail: determines the number of times effects will be applied
• Variation: random seeding of the islands
• Blurring: sets the number of times smoothing is applied to the noise filter
• Sharpness (Exp. Base): determines the sharpness of the surface
• Sharpness (Freq. Step): determines the number of times the Sharpness filter is used on the surface

You should note that this terrain is now where near a good terrain, this terrain should be used as a base for your own terrain.

Painting Terrain
You can acces this dialog by pressing Terrain>Edit Terrain. In this mode you can paint the terrain by yourself. Again, this is self axplanitory, but here are some hints:

• Left Click Raises/Adds terrain, Right Click Lowers/Removes terrain
• Black = low, White = high

In my opinion, this terrain is allso not 'that' good since it is not as acurate and you easily get large "pylons" on your train wich look ugly and unrealistic.

Viewport Painting
This can be reached trough the rollup bar (terrain > modify). The options are self axplanitory (yeah i know, again), but i will explain some of them:

• Outer and Inner radius modifies the size and falloff of the brush.
• Hardness will modify the power of the brush
• Flatten: Will make the terrain perfectly flat at the selected height
• To raise the terrain, choose the Raise/Lower Brush and set the height to a positive number
• To lower the terrain, choose a negative number

This is the most accurate working method (not the fastest tough)to work, since you see your changes how you will see them in the game. The best way to work to me is to generate a heightmap, quickdraw one in the edit terrain box and thn finetune it in viewport editing. Or i import one from world machine or L3DT, but that will be a different tutorial. Now try to make some terrain, it doesent matter how it looks for now, just make shure its not to steep.

Texturing

So you made some terrain and noticed something?... Thats right, everythings white and no its not a snow map. You will need to assign a color and detail texture to the terrain. But first go to file>generate surface texture, just press ok and leave the settings at default. This will generate the surface textur, its best to do this from time to time (when working on the terrain textures/details/shape).

We will first make the basic layer (green grass). Go to the terrain tab in the rollup bar and choose layer painter. First look for a white box and click on it. Here you can choose the base color for the terrain. Choose a grass like green color and press the to layer button (will assign the color to the layer). The filter slider will adjust the brightness of the color.

So try painting the terrain by holding the left mouse button and moving across the terrain. If you look at it now, you will see that its just green, nothing special. Thats because we havent assigned a detail texture to the layer. Goto Terrain>Texture and click on the layer that is allready there (Default layer) and click on the load texture button. A list with textures will appear, pick on and open it. For the sake of this tutorial we will pick "beach_white_sand.dds"

Now press the edit surface type button and the Surface Types dialog box will open where we can assign a detail texture. To select one click the material editor button and the material editor will open. Search for "plains_grass_green_and_dry " and click on it. Now close the material editor and click the "Pick selected" button. You can allso change the scaling here. I usualy choose 0.5 for the X and Y axis.

Now we have a default layer you can add another layer for different stuff (layer for sand, stones,...). To paint on that layer , choose the correct layer in the layer painter tool , assign a color, press the "to layer" button and start painting. To end, Regenerate the surface again with the default settings (i will cover the options in a later tutorial).

You should now have a basic terrain with 1 texture assigned to it. If you want to see it better, press CTRL+G. With this you will enter the game inside the editor.

NOTE! If you can't enter the game, save your work, exit the editor and load the editor and your map again, this should fix the problem.

Conclusion

If you did everything correct you should be walking around your first crysis map. In a next tutorial i will be talking about vegetation and object placement. I hope your map worked out the way it should have and you enjoyed yourself