Overview

This document provides an overview of CRYENGINE Sandbox interface when you start it the first time.
The interface can be heavily customized, elements detached and placed on a second monitor for instance, or windows can be combined together to enable quick access once they are needed.
Making yourself familiar with Viewport Navigation and Customizing the Sandbox Layout are essential for an effective workflow.

The Main Editor View

By default, the main Editor window contains various sub-windows that allow you to perform the majority of the editing functions.

Shown here are the Welcome Screen (center), Main Menu (top), RollupBar (right), Status Bar (bottom), and Console (bottom).

The Main Menu is found at the top of the screen and contains the menu options for the Editor. It includes the basic file saving and loading functions, to terrain editing and displaying options, as well as access to the more advanced functions of the Editor.

The Menu Bar

The Menu Bar allows quick and easy access to many of the features of the Sandbox Editor (from basic file operations and display options, to more advanced features such as terrain and level editing tools and AI settings) through the toolbars and icons at the top of the screen.

For more information, you can refer to The Menu Bar documentation.

The Toolbars

The Toolbars can be found directly below the Menu bar and are made up of several groups: EditMode (top row), Object (bottom right), Terrain (bottom left), Dialogs (bottom middle).

More toolbars are available but hidden by default. Right click in the Toolbar area to bring up the display context menu.

For more information, you can refer to The Tool Bar Menu documentation.

The Viewport

The Viewport window (or often referred to as "Perspective View") is the main window that is used to view the level. This is where a large majority of the level design tasks take place, such as object placement, terrain editing, and in-editor play testing.

In the upper right-hand corner of the Perspective viewport are the current aspect ratio of the Perspective viewport and two buttons. The search filter is first, then the first button turns helpers on and off (the keyboard shortcut is Shift + Spacebar).

The second button panels the Perspective viewport with whatever Editor or perspective view is selected. Select a secondary view or Editor by left clicking the Perspective header, and selecting them from the View menu.

For a tutorial on controlling the main viewport, refer to Viewport Window.

The RollupBar

The RollupBar is a quick menu for many kinds of functionality within the Editor stored in an easily accessible format.

It is split into several tabs: Objects (brushes, entities, shapes, etc), Terrain (terrain, vegetation and environment tools), Modelling (obsolete) Display (rendering, 3d settings, debugging tools), and Layer organization tools.

For more information, you can refer to the RollupBar documentation.

The Status Bar

The Status Bar contains information about the current game folder, console connection information, memory consumption of the level.

The Selection Strip

The Selection Strip contains an area at the bottom for prompt and selection information about your scene. There is a coordinate display area in which you can type transform values, buttons to turn on AI/Physics and change speed of Viewport Navigation.

For more information, you can refer to The Selection Strip documentation.

The Console

The Console is a command-line editor, allowing access to many advanced functions within the Sandbox Editor, including various debug and test modes.

For more information please see the Console and Config Usage document. For a list of console commands, see the Console Commands Reference document.

The Console window in the Sandbox Editor is used to input variables. It can be visually toggled on or off by going to the View Menu and selecting View Console or by pressing the tilde (`) or caret key (^) while the Perspective Viewport is selected. The standard console can also be accessed in Sandbox while in-game mode (CTRL+G) is activated.

To cycle between console commands, tap the TAB key to cycle alphabetically or CTRL+TAB to cycle reverse-alphabetically while the cursor is located in the console text bar. Typing the first few characters of a command and pressing TAB will auto-complete the command, subsequently pressing TAB or CTRL+TAB will cycle through commands as detailed above.

To display a list of recently entered commands press the UP ARROW, navigate using the UP and DOWN ARROWS and select a command by pressing ENTER.

In addition to the standard Console Window, the Console Variables dialog can be used to display and modify a full list of console variables. It can be accessed by double clicking the Console window input field or by clicking the dialog button to the far right of the input field.

Search for variables with partial or complete commands. Information on individual variables can be shown by hovering the mouse over a Console Variable for a couple of seconds in the Console Variable window, text will be displayed as a tool-tip.

The Console Variables window.

• The first column of the Console Variables window shows at a glance whether the variable is an integer (\n) or a string (ab).
• The second column displays the console variable name, where the first letter(s) before the underscore represent the module the command belongs to. For example: r for render and g for game.
• The third column displays a numeric value or string that represents the variable state.

Quick Console Command Tips