CryEngine 3 SDK: How to Keep Your Map to Scale

Category: CryEngine 3 SDK

November 10, 2011

We continue with CryEngine 3 SDK tutorials. If you are just starting to learn and use CryEngine 3 SDK, start here.

In this tutorial we cover how to keep your world to scale.

When I started working with CryEngine it was difficult to gauge scale and proportions of the world. CryEngine can build large landscapes, you have to be able to judge world scale and how far terrain and objects are from each other. Here are 6 ways to keep your maps in CryEngine 3 SDK to proper scale and proportions.

Topics covered:

Using objects/models as a reference scale
Placing human reference scale
Using default texture as scale reference
Using ruler tool to measure distance

1. POV IN GAME

Best and most effective way to gauge scale and proportion is to jump into the game. You can do so at anytime during your map creation.

Press Ctrl + G to spawn in game.

2. PLACE WORLD OBJECT

You can place a world object that will provide a scale reference to the rest of the world. Things such as a vehicles and buildings. Since we know how big these things are in real life, they help to gauge the scale to the rest of the environment.

To add an object/model see this tutorial.

Below you can get a better sense of the scale and proportions of the landscape and how far everything is from each other.

3. TEXTURE TILING

Another way is to look at texture tiling. This is a little more difficult to gauge. Best way to use this is in combination with a few of these techniques.

4. POV DOWN LOW

You can position your camera down to the terrain and get a point of view from near the ground. As long as you are very close to the terrain, you will get a good sense of map's scale.

5. HUMAN REFERNCE SCALE

Place an AI character as a human reference scale into the world. This will give you very accurate way of judging scale of the world.

Go to Objects Tab in the RollupBar, Entity --> AI --> Grunt.

Select Grunt and Left Click + Drag into perspective viewport.

6. RULER TOOL

You have a very handy additional tool in the menu bar called Ruler. You can measure distances between objects and terrain areas.

The measurement is in meters.

Click on Ruler tool to enable it.

Left click to place first Ruler point and left click again to place a second Ruler point. This will calculate the distance between these two points and give you a value in meters.