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CryENGINE 3 Free SDK

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CryDev has released their CryENGINE 3 SDK to the public with various license models ranging from free with limited commercial use to also 2 commercial license models. For those who might not know it, it is an extremely well developed and powerful game engine which is used for the popular Crysis game series.

This SDK besides the CryENGINES has enough tools to also fully develop new games from scratch - not just mods.

Read more in the following:

CryDEV states:

Anyone can now download a full version of the best All-In-One Game Development Engine, for free and use it without charge for non-commercial game development. Try out the fastest toolset for creating game worlds and use the power of CryENGINE 3 in your own games

CryENGINE Free Use
You can use CryENGINE 3 for free in educational facilities, even if you are charging tuition. We have always offered our engine for free to educators, but now individual students can also freely download the engine and use if to learn about real-time 3D development.

CryENGINE 3 is also free for non-commercial use; if you are distributing your game or application for free (and not charging for your work in producing it, whether directly or indirectly), no additional license is required.

CryENGINE 3 Independent Developers Platform
We want you to make games with CryENGINE 3 that people will want to play. We hope that your work will lead to a product you can commercialise. If this is the case, before you can sell your work or your game, you must seek a development license for CryENGINE 3.

CryENGINE 3 for Independent Studios, Free To Play Games or Downloadable Games
Crytek has attractive options for smaller games built with CryENGINE 3, with shorter development timescales. If you want to move your game onto platforms other than PC, or you need access to CryENGINE 3 source code, please contact Crytek to find out more about our licensing for Independent Studios.

 

Geeky-Gadgets.com writes:

For those developers that are looking to make the step in to commercial gaming, Crytek offer a royalty-only license model for any games created with their SDK. Where Crytek will only ask for 20% of the revenues from the commercial launch of the developers game.

There seems to be a little bit confusion about the license models for the commercial application - but I assume time will clarify this.

 

Links:

46 Comments

  1. So...Unity and CryEngine(and somewhat UDK, except we need an updated .ase exporter :P), any other engines that I need to hear about? :P

  2. I knew this would eventually happen. UDK is 'free' to an extent. YOu can get a free version of Unity 3D. So, the next leader would be Crytek. Not a huge surprise.

    Honestly, between Unity3D and UDK I'm not really sure Crytek has a huge place .. yet. UDK is a beast. Unity is great for mobile and web games ... Crytek just seems .. slightly behind.

  3. What's this? No fanboys demanding that their news be Blender exclusive? Or that whenever a commercial company releases free software, it's just to get you to buy the full product? Wow... It's so... Peaceful.

    Anyway, it's cool to see this out for free, I've never played Crysis but from the few screenshots I've seen I always thought it looked pretty good. Looking forward to trying this out and seeing what it can do!

  4. I was waiting for this to happen for a long time now. I am so happy, I am downloading it right now. I just need to learn blender, this engine and studying biology in school now. Oh well, it will be fun trying to learn as much as I can.

  5. I evaluated CryEngine alongside UDK, and by far UDK is better. Maybe you don't have the same wow factor in UDK like in CryEngine but beside this is much better. With UDK you can't go wrong. Until you make the first 50000$ from UDK you don't pay royalties. The tools inside UDK are more powerful and also there are Blender scripts to export directly to UDK. You have option to build for multiple platforms, including iOS, and soon Android and OSX. UDK have a monthly schedule update, with lots of wonderful features, bug-fixes and optimizations. Worth making a try before taking a decision. Personally, more I learn about UDK, more I love.

  6. As there is no way for now to export directly from Blender to CryEngine 3, you may use an indirect way. Export your blend file as a .3ds file and open it in SketchUp. Use the free PlayUp plugin (www.playuptools.com) to export from SketchUp to CryEngine (it will create a new layer in CryEngine, see instructions). Once it is setup, it takes just a few seconds to have your blender mesh in CryEngine 3.

    But it would be nice to be able to export directly.

    CryEngine is not Unity 3D. It is way more powerful. The graphics are amazing. It compares to UDK. I prefer CryEngine but try also UDK. I am just not sure if you can get blend files easily in UDK.

  7. winner: that is just an idea/rumor for now there is no official information about that yet
    if you read the forum threads about this on http://crydev.com/ you will see that the this is to be announce in the future...

  8. Uh, I tried both sandbox 2, 3 and UDK and IMO CE3 is more powerful than UDK, especially for big scenes.
    The lighting system is just incredible, most things are completly executed in realtime, whereas UDK always asks for compiling this and this and this...2
    Plus the support of a native ocean system and voxels right in the editor is amazing (you can make complex 3D terrain where needed thanks to voxels, not with a simple height map system).

    However as CE3 free SDK just came out, there is no exporter for blender made by the community atm, that's a shame :/
    Maybe someone here would feel capable of taking the old script and maintain it?
    When I tried the blender to udk exporter last January it was horrible, it kept crashing blender or udk all the time for lots of various reasons. I recently saw a lot of good updates to this scripts recently.
    I guess an exporter for CE3 will follow the same road, but it will take time to develop if only one volunteer does it.

  9. @ LswaN

    What’s this? No fanboys demanding that their news be Blender exclusive? Or that whenever a commercial company releases free software, it’s just to get you to buy the full product? Wow… It’s so… Peaceful.

    LOL, I think the same, comments like "Ohh no, X brand released a new downloadable toy to test...but it costs = sucks- ohh is so lame-ohh my poor Blender community has been raped for naming autodesk here", is plain BS.

    Glad to hear news around the 3D world.

  10. I really prefer the UDK option for AAA game it is plain and clear.
    You use the engine for free and when you are ready to sell, just paid $99, and there you have it. if you are successfull, I mean very successfull you start paying Royalties.
    CE3 does not make it plain and straight forward.

    Exported for Blender you guy make me laugh... if you are really serious into making a AAA game using UDK or CryE3 it suggest that you have the resources to buy Maya or 3DS Max which are the Standard in the 3D Industry whether you like it or not.

    Be realistic guys Most of us will only develop game for the Web/Mobile (which is are still very profitable market) which make me come to the following conclusion:

    You want to make a game to sell then you use Unity3 which support blender for donkeys year (so not hassle in the workflow e.g Save in 3ds Max read in SketchUp and Finally UDK).
    You can then deploy on the Web Mac and window for free. You want to go Mobile, then you pay your $400 for Android. (Not Iphone you are better off using UDK)

    If you have a team and you are all very ambitious and want to develop AAA game (Just like the BIOSHOCK GUYS) using all the fancy effect ans shadow that we can see in games nowadays then you go for UNREAL if you get anywhere with your project
    (I really don't think you will) then you pay $99 and sell your game.

    I totally agree with TADD:
    #
    Honestly, between Unity3D and UDK I’m not really sure Crytek(I am going to Add Torque3D, Shiva3D and all the rest of them) has a huge place .. yet. UDK is a beast. Unity is great for mobile and web games … Crytek just seems .. slightly behind.
    #

    • If your game is good enough even with a team, you could just shove down 4,500 dollars, use blender, and sacrifice a little bit of graphics, still have a very successful AAA quality game on PC OSX Ipod and android, with as much sales as a UDK game and enjoy a royalty free 100,000 plus dollars. spending less money on that you would with 3ds max and the UDK royalty. Blender isn't a hassle also. If you go on youtube and spend 6 hours watching tutorials, you can pretty much pick up everything you need.

  11. Problem with cry at the moment is, that you can't create a standalone build with it. So it's pretty useless right now. Other problem is, that Cry's pipeline is much more built for Autodesk Packages than UDK. However, it is a pretty powerful and nice SDK. Way better than Unity, which is expensive crap.

    • I'd have to disagree with your facts Dave. Unity can be used to make some amazing games. The graphics quality isn't as amazing as ryengine but the functionality is the same if not better. Unity also has a Huge comunity and a shit load of tutorials. I've yet to find more than 5 programming tutorials on either UDK or Cryengine

  12. It's kind of funny how a lot of people can not do math. Sure with cryE3 you pay 20% from the first dollar. If you plan to make a game you plan to make more than $50,000. So I am pretty sure 20% at $50,000 is less than 25%(UDK) at $50,000. I know most blenderheads have to have everything for free.Every once and a while you are going to have to pay for somthing. ;)

    • Sorry about that but UDK only takes money after the fact that you get 50,000 dollars, which means that the first 50,000 dollars are free, they only take the money after that first 50,000 dollars. So if you make exactly 50,000 dollars on that game you'd have made , UDK would have been free whereas Cryengine would be 10,000 dollars. at 100,000 dollars it would be 12,500 from UDK and Cryengine would be 20,000 dollars.

  13. blenderdan,

    http://www.udk.com/licensing

    You doesn't have to pay for the first $50,000.

    Cryengine. 20% of 50,000 is 10,000
    UDK 25% of (50,000 - 50,000) = 0.

    Cryengine. 20% of 100,000 = 20,000
    UDK 25% of (100,000 - 50,000) = 12,5000

    That is number one. Number two is, if you are making too much money, you have the option of picking another type of licensing (which is tailored for bigger studios) so that you doesn't have to pay too much in royalties.

    Anyway, I'm still waiting for Cryengine for Cinema.

  14. So much concern for money making, frankly I think you will count the number of individuals who will churn out a commercially successful game using Cryengine on the fingers of your hand.

    You have a commercial grade engine that you can play with to create some amazing works and all people see are dollar signs in their eyes.

  15. Forget about making money with games (see fred post); the real potential of these toolkits is that, instead of creating a single image or a short clip of a landscape like you would do e.g. with Vue or Terragen2, you create a whole environment that people can explore by themselves. It is a completely different experience.

  16. Your right Fable Fox. It seems UDK has updated their lisence since the last time I reviewed it. When they first came out the limit was $12,500 and if you made $12,501 you had to pay 25% on $12,501. Still, in the long run 20% will prevail.

    @ fred you have obviously been living under a rock. There are a lot of small independent game companies out there making money.

    And why is it that people think that if they can download something it should be free. As if it does not take any time or effort to make these programs. I wonder fred, do you have a job? If you do, do you get paid for your time. How could your company pay you if they gave everything away for free?

    • Random_overtone on

      I agree with all your points. Google and Open source software are perfect examples of making money from free software though.

      Its just a shame how greedy this has made the average consumer.

  17. @ eastib

    As best I understand it, Linux uses the Unity game engine. I don't know about implementing CryEngine over Linux. The game engine I use for multiplatform of course is the Blender game engine. Though for Linux, I hear a lot of people don't like the Unity engine and prefer Ubuntu.

    • Random_overtone on

      Just a note on this. "Unity" for ubuntu is not unity3d.com

      Not trying to pick on you but what you said makes no sense. There is no UDK, Cryengine or unity3d engine for linux.

      Ubuntu is an operating system and has nothing to do with games.
      ********************************

      Unity for games: http://unity3d.com/

      Unity for ubuntu: http://unity.ubuntu.com/

      They're 2 different things completely, they just have the same name.

  18. Hey guys I'm 15 years old I'm interested in Cryengine SDK and I want to get it but I can't because of registration, I have to have a business etc, is there another way to register thanks need a reply

  19. I understand what everyone here is trying to say. My company has trialled both UDK and CE3 for creating visualisations and we believe that CE3 is by far the superior product. We are artists, not programmers so it helps to have a great INTERFACE that is easy to understand.

    Just a few things that we have found quite useful is that CE3 works in unit to unit rather then the 1 unit to 1.9 or whatever it is in UDK. This makes scaling stuff in other programs such and 3dsmax and blender a real pain.

    CE3's lighting system is far superior to anything else that we have come across and the time of day too is priceless in our industry. It is also great for creating simulations.

    Everyone here is concerned about pricing but they are are always willing to negotiate. They also have per seat licensing agreement which is great for a company like the one I work for. Crytek is unwilling to let prices be known because each company has different needs.

    They have a greater community base and they actually give you documentation written by those who wrote the engine. I think we placed a few questions on the UDK site which to this day still haven't been answered.

    The interface is very similar to most 3d packages and it's easy to find and use what you want. I'm not sure how things are going with the blender export but it's got great intergration between 3dsmax/Maya and the engine itself.

    You can edit the game in real-time while others are playing the game. When you work in the visualisation industry this is amazing. Example - You can have multiple people in the engine looking at a road/mine/construction site and one person can update what everyone is looking at without having to rebake and build everything.

    These are just a few of the things that we have found with CE3 but am always happy to be proven otherwise but so far so good for us.

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