Crytek Went “Bonkers” Creating CryEngine for Crysis

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Summary

  • Crytek’s Crysis showcased cutting-edge visuals with breakthrough features like destructible vegetation.
  • The game’s development involved extensive research on jungles, lighting interactions, and subsurface scattering.
  • Crysis prioritized high-quality dynamic lighting, shadows, and advanced character features like blush effects.

Around the year 2000, one of the most remarkable technological advancements in gaming emerged: Crytek’s game, Crysis. This game was developed using a self-owned engine, aptly named the CryEngine, which was particularly noteworthy.

Back in the day, Crysis truly stood out as a technical marvel on PCs, leaving other studios scrambling to catch up. As a dedicated fan, I recently had the pleasure of diving into an article from the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, where Crytek shared insights into the engine’s creation and its impressive power back then.

Crytek CEO Makes Distinction Between Photorealism And Video Realism

According to Crytek CEO Cervat Yerli, the focus of video realism lies in making moving objects appear lifelike, rather than still screenshots. This perspective enabled them to explore motion blur, depth of field, animations, and physical reactions. As a result, breakable trees were developed, marking an effort to incorporate destructible vegetation into their work.

In terms of creating the most visually stunning jungles for Crysis 1, Crytek left no stone unturned and even dispatched a research team to Haiti to gather firsthand data on real-life jungle environments.

Yerli recounts, “They captured countless images and recordings, meticulously analyzing the way light interacts with trees and canopies to create ‘god rays’ and subsurface scattering – a soft, green translucency occurring when the sun is behind the leaf. Subsurface scattering was a technology that was available in engines but was extremely slow. No one had ever implemented it on such a large scale before.

It’s stated that Crytek insisted on nothing less than top-notch dynamic lighting and shading in a vast, intricate landscape setting. Furthermore, they required the vegetation to be animated realistically, mimicking how nature would naturally sway and rustle, responding even to characters brushing through it.

When it comes to character design, Crytek and their technology didn’t just pay attention to the surroundings, but they also put significant effort into creating realistic characters. As Yerli explains, Crysis featured a skin shader that was incredibly detailed, even going as far as rendering the eyes precisely. This level of detail was so advanced that it allowed characters to blush, which was practically unheard of at the time. Yerli himself admitted, “We really pushed the boundaries with this one,” and went on to say, “Even the eyes had shadows within them. The shadow maps were calculated for the face itself. So when light hit from a specific angle, it would cause the nose to cast a shadow.

The last Crysis game that was released was Crysis 3 back in 2013. However, developer Crytek has officially confirmed they are working on a new Crysis title, but details about it are scarce as we currently only have a teaser to go by. If you’d like to catch up on the older Crysis games, the Crysis Remastered Trilogy is now available on all contemporary gaming platforms.

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2025-01-07 02:38