AlienArt

"Art" can be a rock, a building or even a working factory.
This article documents each step of art import from recent 3.x blender into Cryengine 2. This will cover non animated objects and game assets only.
By Alien (perhaps a misnomer) it's meant as totally new, possibly even strange "art" in respect of what's present in the present Asset Pool.

The process:

Preparing The geometry

now with blender 3.x

This is a procedure covering the ever growing technology gap between the free and ever livid blender and the aging cryengine2.
Just get any blender past 3.x release.

Get it ready

Prepare Collection

For a Mesh to be fit for cryengine it has to fulfill several criteria due to how some compromises were made.
It is a convention and if one sticks to it good results will ensue.

1. No more than two triangles should share same edge.
2. There should be nothing but triangles (or quads) as the final result - remove all and any nodes and or lines (primitives)...
3. There should be no triangles of surfaces of size zero (degenerate faces).
4. It is desirable for the mesh be airtight, but there are valid exceptions.

The Object is to be investigated for the quality and errors for UV mapping.
Only a single UV map per mesh is supported in Cryengine

The Object is to be assigned To a Collection (no more Groups in blender 3.x) that shares the same name
The .blend file is to be saved with the same name, so that it shares (again) the same name as the object and collection.

We should now be ready for the export to collada (.dae file)

Prepare Export

Export settings

Collada export options

As seen on the image the favorable settings differ from defaults. It is therefore advisable to create a operator preset (i aptly named "cryengine export") for further convenience.

Parameter Meaning

Parameter name	Explanation
Transform	Decomposed (this means rotation, translation and scale are decomposed)
Triangulate	leave no uncertain surfaces unresolved by blender.
Apply Transforms	Viewport (it is usually safe to assume this is true)
Selection Only	we rarely need everything from the file - watch for proper parent-children chains!
Include children	if parenting is properly laid out - this works miracles!
Use Object Instances	don't use this - i tried it once and it was ugly
Use Blender Profile	this is best left off - always leave it off for Cryengine export.

Converting the format

Prepare your Linux

For this to work at all some prerequisites are to be met. You didn't think you'll get off the hook as easy, didn't you?

We need working ColladaCGF in wine, for this we need working PyFFI in wine, and for this we need working Python in wine in the first place.

For this all to work at all certain versions are to be downloaded and fed to wine:

• Python 2.6.6 (or earlier, but ideally exactly 2.6.6 (32bit release only)
• PyFFI 2.1.11 (the last one that works with 2.x python, newer ones require python 3.x)
• ColladaCGF 0.3.9 (the last one available)

For this to work you will need your Linux to be either "multilib" (more likely applies to you) or 32bit (less likely but possible)

Install In that exact order (Python, PyFFI, Collada).
The very installation process:

1. Locate the repositories
2. Download the corresponding versions and to what place locally
3. Point a file manager or explorer inside of wine to the downloaded files in order to install them

Is left as an exercise to the reader as the web locations are documented in another article on this wiki.

To make certain they are in the right wine prefix check that both files:

"C:\Python26\python.exe"

and

"C:\Python26\Scripts\colladacgf.py"

should be present.

Now if you are not using XFCE4 as your GUI, too bad you're just out of luck. Otherwise open the Custom Actions chooser via the Edit menu of Thunar and make a new custom action:

Custom Actions setup with Thunar and XFCE4

I named the action [ ColladaCGF ] and gave it the default python icon. The description should be obvious: [ Convert a dae file into cgf ]. The command that worked for me was:

[ wineconsole "C:\Python26\python.exe" "C:\Python26\Scripts\colladacgf.py" %F --pause ]

where %F is a list of selected files with the full path.

The filters on the other tab are to be set accordingly:
[ *.dae;*.DAE ]

mind the semicolon. And the affected files are the text files (since .dae files look like XML files) and other files, just in case. Never mind this impossible screenshot - it is CGI - so you have it all on one place for maximum convenience.

Apply, close and restart Thunar. Now on You should have a context option for each .dae file:

ColladaCGF usage in XFCE on Linux

Point the ColladaCGF to the .dae file

The .dae file is to be selected, rightclick > ColladaCGF and voila! by automagic a bunch of murr-murr and computer speak will fill a dark frame, once you notice the computer has stopped spewing insults and dark magic, there might be a blinking cursor waiting no you to press [enter] key and close the window. You might have just converted your first CGF file on Linux. Or you will be in due time. Conversions often fail due to not adhering to the convention mentioned earlier.

Find the cgf file

The newly generated .CGF file and it's belonging .MTL file should lay next to each other and next to the source .DAE file. There might be leftovers in the form of logs and dumps. This can be safely ignored, they can safely be deleted too.

Importing into engine on Linux

I assume Your Linux has multilib capability here on. I assume You understand what that means and know where to ask for details for Your distro of choice.

How to get the editor working (Glitch TKG's github)

I see not too many casualties to this point. Good; good, here onward it gets tough as nails, and by that i mean eating chains to fart back nails!.

https://github.com/Tk-Glitch (kudos to Tk-Glitch o/ )

https://github.com/Tk-Glitch/PKGBUILDS/wiki/wine-tkg-git#dependencies

You want to build a not only custom version of wine (as if that wasn't intimidating enough!).

No sir, you want a highly customized, overly patched VERY recent version wine-staging that has support for child-window our Sandbox2 editor uses to render the game within it's app window.

No configuration files need to be modified in the [wine-tkg-git] directory, You merely cd to it and run [./non-makepkg-build.sh]

first time you will be dropped to a shell with info and stuff...

make the following file:

file: [~/.config/frogminer/wine-tkg.cfg]:

_LOCAL_PRESET="none"
_use_GE_patches="true"
_plain_version=""
_use_staging="true"
_staging_version="v7.22"
_use_fastsync="false"
_use_esync="true"
_use_fsync="true"
_fsync_futex_waitv="true"
_use_vkd3dlib="true"
_dxvk_dxgi="true"

_proton_battleye_support="false"
_proton_eac_support="false"
_warframelauncher_fix="false"
_mwo_fix="false"
_re4_fix="false"

_childwindow_fix="true"

_use_josh_flat_theme="true"

And once saved, re-run the above command. Install the new wine and make MWLL run in it's prefix.

to run the editor you will need few more winetricks...
Fended off yet? no? Good, because that isn't nearly the end of the desert :D.
add (via winetricks) the following:

1. d3dcompiler_43
2. d3dcompiler_47
3. dotnet472 (needed for the launcher anyway (will pull in much down to dotnet40) )
4. dxvk (i have dxvk1101 so far)
5. vcrun2005 (MWLL needs it won't run w/o)
6. (add the two redists from the MWLL package, 32bit ones)

Now on the editor should launch:
(note there is no newline at the top of the file)

file: [~/.local/bin/MWLLeditor.sh]:

#! /bin/bash

v=0.10-beta
#executable=Crysis.exe
executable=Editor.exe
shaderspath=~/Documents/My\ Games/Crysis\ Wars/Shaders

i=${1:-3}

if [ "X"$i != "X" ] ; then
    pass=$i
    echo $i
fi

if (( $pass > 3 )) || (( $pass < 1 )); then
   echo " uasge:"
   echo $0 "{1|2|3}"
   echo "1 = winecfg, 2 = winetricks, 3 = editor"
   exit 2
fi

echo $pass

# switch comment whats appropriate
#  export WINEARCH=win32
#  winegamepath='/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Electronic Arts/Crytek/Crysis Wars/Bin32'
#  windowsgamepath='C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis Wars\Bin32\'

  export WINEARCH=win64
  winegamepath='/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Electronic Arts/Crytek/Crysis Wars/Bin64'
  windowsgamepath='C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis Wars\Bin64\'

#here we do "magic" to run DX9 (only supported so far)
#and tell Crysis we want the MWLL mod not the OEM game :^)
OPT="-dx9 -mod MWLL"
#OPT="-mod MWLL"
#OPT="-dx9"

# reducing what wine spews at us
#export WINEDEBUG=-fixme-all,-warn-all,-err-all,-all
export WINEDEBUG=-all

WINEFSYNC=1
WINEESYNC=1
DXVK_HUD=1
DXVK_FILTER_DEVICE_NAME="NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB"

# we controll which directory we want be runned by the script
  export WINEPREFIX=~/.wine

#this can really beak things if enabled but try it?
#  export MESA_DEBUG=1


# we the humans check here what renders our stuff
# if not "Gallium" then it's software = too slow
REND=$(glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" | awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk -F"(" '{print $1}')
echo "Renderer:"$REND
echo "if the above is llvm and not an actual card the game will not work"

#cleaning leftovers from late dinner ;)
killall $executable
killall -9 $executable

#cleaning shader cache for better performance each time
#rm -r "${shaderspath}/*"

#here I cleverly avoid calling the path with my user name :)
cd "${WINEPREFIX}${winegamepath}/${binpath}"
#here i cleverly ask to show the path so we see what WINEPREFIX was called
pwd

case $WINEARCH in
win64)
     echo 64bit
     case $pass in
     1)
         winecfg
         ;;
     2)
         winetricks
         ;;
     3)
        wine64 "${windowsgamepath}${executable}"  $OPT # 2>/dev/null # &> MWLL_debug.log
     #if uncommented, the last line's comment dumps a log file to the game folder - might prove usefull or a vaste of disk space
         ;;
     esac
     ;;
win32)
     echo 32bit
     case $pass in
     1)
         winecfg
         ;;
     2)
         winetricks
         ;;
     3)
         #here (hopefully) no shit hits the fan, and we land in game menu
         wine ${windowsgamepath}${executable} $OPT # &> MWLL_debug.log
         #if uncommented, the last line's comment dumps a log file to the game folder - might prove usefull or a vaste of disk space
         ;;
     esac
     ;;
esac
# to restore resolution put here what's appropriate or leave as is and just uncomment
xrandr -s 0 # last good resolution

This should have you all set.

Run the editor

You can now start the file by typing [MWLLeditor.sh] in a command prompt and pressing enter. Pick a map ([TC_Reference] comes to mind) and try add an brush. Here on is uncharted territory, keep me posted!

What breaks in the editor and how to work around it

TODO