What's the deal with CryTek?

zombie420

I know very little about Crytek and am quite comfortable with UDK. As an environmental artist, I've found that the use of vertex painting in UDK's engine allows me to interrupt repetition while maintaining optimization. I love that feature. Does Crytek have its version of vertex painting? Or, in its most simple terms, what can I do in Crytek that is unavailable to me in UDK?

I think it's time to expand my resume and illustrating my understanding of the engine's capabilities sounds advantageous.

Olli.

The CryEngine doesnt support in-engine vertex painting, but there are shaders that make use of vertex colors painted in 3ds max or maya or whatever you use.

you can make various blend effects using the vertex colors to define the strength of the blend, and you can also paint visual vertex color, for example to bake in AO on objects with tileable textures.

You best bet is to just download the FreeSDK and fiddle around with it. CryEngines best attribute is probably the fact that its all dynamic, and you can have a super smooth workflow with it with ease.

Visceral

Pasicly you adjust the vertex colors in max or maya before import, its just as powerful.

zombie420

That Crytek 3DS shader is very cool, but what concerns me with pre-import vertex painting is that I can't interrupt repetition on the fly. With UDK, I can import a single modular mesh and get entirely different results with it. If I'm not mistaken, it sounds like that feature is very restricted within CryTek?

Olli.

yes UDK has better vertex painting support

AlexCatMasterSupreme

But Cryengine has no lightmaps, and there is no baking time, there wasn't in CE2 either, both are powerful, both have pros and cons.