Help needed - Crysis sandbox draw distance

    Hi guys

    I thought i'd ask for help here as i know there are a few Crytek guys around and CryMod seems to be down at the moment...i'm looking into learning the sandbox editor and am having trouble with the draw distance in the editor - my scenery displays the detail texture until i'm right up close to it, at which point i'm too close to edit it properly which is annoying.

    Below is a shot of what i'm on about - how do i increase the draw distance of objects and textures within the actual editor? I've found multiple solutions for increasing it in game using config file, but not for in the editor.

    Cheers for any help!

    The wiki is still up, so a lot of your questions can probably be answered by sifting through there. http://wiki.crymod.com/index.php/Main_Page

    For the terrain detail texture, you can change it's view distance by going into the 'Terrain' tab in the rollup bar > 'Environment' > 'Terrain' > 'DetailViewDistRatio'.

    For objects, just click on your brush or entity and in properties window in the rollup bar, change the 'ViewDistRatio' number.

    Also, the above problem you're having could have to do with (and I'm guessing it is) various terrain texture bugs in the editor.

    It may be a simple matter of going to 'Tools' > 'Reload Textures/Shaders' as well as 'Reload Terrain'. Or, you may need to regenerate your terrain textures, export to engine, save, close the editor and reload your map.

    Happy to help! Sometimes there's really annoying problems where the solution isn't posted in the wiki, so don't be afraid to post again if you need to.

    If you bought Crysis, the editor install file is either on the DVD or in one of the bin files once the game is installed. It's been awhile so I can't recall it's location for sure. The editor for Warhead (or Wars to be more precise) can be found in the SDK:

    http://www.fileplanet.com/197537/190000 ... s-Mod-SDK-

    You don't need Warhead to use the editor, just the multiplayer portion 'Wars'. Before I bought Warhead, I had to download the free Wars trial (it's the complete game) and update it to the latest patch, then install the SDK. This was awhile ago as well, so I can't remember where I downloaded it from but here's a site you might want to try:

    http://computergames.ro/en/games/viewit ... loads.html

    I recommend going with the Wars editor as it's much more stable than the Crysis editor.

    Actually i do have another question then, the terrain textures are fine now that i increased the draw distance, however vegetation cuts off at a certain point.

    I've put the SpriteDistanceRatio and MaxViewDistanceRatio for the vegetation as high as they'll go, however they still disappear when i'm a certain distance away from them (sometimes not even far away). Is this because there is an automatic cull distance on vegetation objects, or am i supposed to be using distance scenery for the far away vegetation? I figure i must be doing something wrong as in this image there is clearly distance vegetation on display and in my scene it's not even as far away:

    Cheers e-freak, i actually need the vegetation to show up within the editor though (not in game), is there a similar thing i can do to get it working in the editor window?

    yes, in the editor you have the console as well (it's the what you see is what you get thing) go to view panes and open the console there - i just checked it and you need to check through these cvars:

    e_ProcVegetationMaxViewDistance

    e_VegetationSprites

    e_VegetationSpritesDistanceCustomRatioMin

    e_VegetationSpritesDistanceRatio

    e_VegetationSpritesMinDistance

    e_ViewDistRatioVegetation

    Also, the SpriteDistanceRatio is actually the opposite of the ViewDistanceRatio: the closer the Sprite ratio is to 0, the farther away till the models get replaced by sprites. The higher the ViewDistance one (towards 255), the farther you can go before it will disappear completely. The LOD one behaves like the Sprite ratio.

    To find console commands, click on that rectangular button at the end of the console command field in the editor. It'll open the toolbox that allows you to look through the whole cvars by just typing something.

    Ok so i've got the console up, i cant see the rectangular button though, my console just seems to act like notepad if i detach it...also anything i type into it just gives me an unknown command error message (i tried typing in the commands above). I've set con_restricted to 0 in case that was it, but it made no difference...is there something i haven't set up correctly?

    [attachment=0]console.jpg[/attachment]

    I'm currently using HP's advanced config files, i tried opening the CVARS folder and actually editing the files in there but that didn't seem to help much either

    Oh wait, that button might be present only in CryEngine 3 My bad. Try double-clicking in the commandline area of the console, it should open it.

    Anyway, you can use the stuff that e-freak suggested: ?something will find any cvar that contains "something" in its name.

    What unknown error message is showing up when you type something?

    EDIT: I've opened up Sandbox2 to check it out and it seems that that CVar window does open when you double-click the console field, but you cannot look for a string in there (that was added later on), so use the ? method above to find console commands. Sorry for the confusion

    That's ok, double clicking worked I have gone through the vegetation options listed above (and some others) and maxxed them out, still no distance scenery visible though

    Hmm, what type of vegetation are we talking about? Could you post pics of it from far & close, with the vegetation menu open & one of those elements selected so we can see the settings?

    In the level you showed as an example earlier, the distant vegetation is mostly composed of large "hill trees" which are low-poly, big, and have big sprites too. The bigger an element of vegetation, the farther away it'll be visible. You can use the View Distance Ratio to increase that (although the values don't seem to work as well as with entities, and so in most official levels it doesn't go higher than 2), and a lower sprite ratio will make them turn into sprites farther away.

    [Blocked Image: http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/3013/53516691.jpg]

    k so ive got the editor

    Its relatively intuitive, which is awesome. However Im still going to need some tutorials, anybody got some good ones?

    Vilham

    http://www.narby.net/?page_id=39 This is quite a good starter tutorial

    At the moment i have a mixture of river trees, cliff bushes and i've just added in some hill trees, still with the same issue, the images below show what is happening. I'm guessing the cliff bushes could be disappearing as they are small bushes, though the issue isn't that there are only sprites visible at a distance, there are just no sprites visible at all, see images:

    [attachment=1]1.jpg[/attachment]

    [attachment=0]2.jpg[/attachment]

    Also, this doesn't seem to effect all the vegetation in my scene, some of it stays put when i zoom out, but only some of it, even though i'm using the same vegetation types all over

    Thanks for the help so far!

    Hmm, this is definitely quite weird, especially if it only affects some of the vegetation. Here are my thoughts to try and understand where the problem comes from:

    - I suppose that screenshot posted earlier was within the editor, so that means if you open a Crysis level in the editor you see the vegetation fine? If so, the problem shouldn't be with your custom config or whatever and you shouldn't have to toy with the cvars

    - Try this: first save a backup of your level anywhere. Then open a level from Crysis, go to the vegetation tab and select the whole list then press the Export Vegetation button at the top-right of the list. Save that somewhere. Get back to your level and go to the vegetation tab and import. Then try painting from those that you imported and see if that works well. If it does, it means it's the settings of your vegetation element that's fucked.

    - Post a shot of the properties of one of the vegetation elements that do not show up properly, there's probably something there that's wrong. Or compare with the properties of the same element in an official level.

    Let me know how that goes

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