Welcome to our major release, CRYENGINE 5.4. We know it has been a long time in the making, but we are sure you'll agree with us - it has been worth the wait!

Honorifics - Credit where Credit is due

Many of you have helped us bring CE 5.4 to release by participating in our Github-powered beta program and test our preview builds. Your feedback, pull requests and open discussions about the builds were invaluable and we want to thank you for your lively participation and collaboration. This is your release as well as ours and we are looking forward to your feedback and ongoing participation in development of CRYENGINE. You are true CryENGINEERS and we are proud and happy to have such a great community by our side.

Contributors

We would like to say a massive thank you to the following for their valuable contribution in the making of this 5.4 release of CRYENGINE.

Shivam Mistry
sorbetsandwich
gdeban
uniflare
Chylix
ochounos

Community high Five!

How to get your hands on CRYENGINE 5.4 and what's new:

New to CRYENGINE?

Get started with CRYENGINE 5.4 by registering & downloading here! It's royalty free and Pay-What-You-Want under our PWYW license agreement.

Upgrading from an older Version?

If you are upgrading your project from CRYENGINE 5.3, please read this topic: Migrating from CRYENGINE 5.3 to CRYENGINE 5.4

For more information on Code Interface Changes, see the Important CRYENGINE 5.4 Data and Code Changes article.

Upgrade Paths

If your project was created using a C++ or C# template, and you have not modified its source code:

• Create a new template of the same type in the CRYENGINE Launcher, and copy your modified assets over. This is much easier than fixing the template code to match the new engine interfaces.
  

If your project was created using a C++ or C# template, and you have modified its source code:

• You will need to manually fix code errors caused by the engine interface changes, please see the aforementioned Data- & Code-Change Article for more information on what has changed.
  

Release Highlights

Substance Integration

Both internally and externally we have seen the industry embrace the concept of harnessing procedural texture creation to extend the usage of individual assets. For some time now, our internal teams have actively used Substance in their workflow so it is a logical addition to be supported within our Sandbox Editor.

Substance Viewport Shader

Terrain System Upgrades

For many years now one of the most heavily requested upgrades to the Engine is that of the 3D Engine, and specifically the Terrain System. In 5.4 we have added several terrain features that allow for the blending and integration of separate objects into the terrain mesh. This dramatically extends the possibilities of current terrain editing tools, allowing for a much higher level of detail, overhangs, or terrain over the objects and therefore much greater flexibility.

Vulkan API Support [Beta]

Release 5.4 includes a beta version of the Vulkan renderer to accompany our DX12 implementation from last year. Vulkan is a cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that enables developers to have high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications with balanced CPU/GPU usage.

Entity Components

A longstanding issue within CRYENGINE has been the reliance on game code to expose and manage entities within your level. CRYENGINE's Entity Component System provides a modular and intuitive way to construct games. The technology works at both the system level and at the entity level.

For more, check out our Entity Component Use Case Tutorials here.

Expand on your previous workflow with How to Combine Components 1 - Rigid Body & Particles and 2 - Collectibles & Power Ups.

Extended Detail Bending (Robinson Tech)

Upgraded in release 5.4 is the new "Extended Detail Bending" toggle - found in the vegetation shader. The history behind this feature comes from Crytek's Robinson: The Journey development and how we needed a more accurate and physically dependent bending solution for our vegetation.

C# Templates

We have added the following templates in C#:

• C# Plugin
  
• C# 3rd person
  

Carrying on with our Launcher improvements, we have also expanded our selection of templates to make getting up and running with CRYENGINE even easier. Several things have been brought over from our C++ arsenal and that includes the Plugin and 3rd Person templates in a C# flavor.

We are going to add more C# templates in the future.

Asset System Updates

In release 5.3 we shipped a base implementation of the new Asset System, this allowed users to directly interact with their assets and directories. We know that the most optimal solution is to never touch Windows Explorer in order to achieve the changes you want and the new Asset System updates certainly bring us one step closer to this reality. Through on-going development we have now added direct drag-and-drop support for the Asset Browser along with other tools integration (Material Editor, Particle Editor).

CRYENGINE Pull Requests

At the end of July we introduced CRYENGINE Pull Requests to the CRYENGINE community (we felt it was worth another mention in these release highlights). This facility is available via GitHub, for general information provided by GitHub regarding Pull Requests, please refer here Pull Requests.

[Read More about CRYENGINE Pull Requests on GitHub]

Additionally, we provide a full guide on how to submit Pull Requests against our branch here.

Photoshop Ultimate Texture Saver

Also in release 5.4 we bring you an extension to Photoshop - the Ultimate Texture Saver. This feature has been developed to make life much easier for Texture Artists and replaces 8 separate files with just 1. To download the tool and for more general information follow the link: [Read More about PS Ultimate Texture Saver]

Particle Presets

Also in release 5.4 we bring you the Particle Editor Presets Library. This new feature comprises a comprehensive list of predefined particle effects such as explosions, fire, embers and smoke that can be added to your level from the off.

Anti-Aliasing

Also in this 5.4 release, we are introducing some new Anti-Aliasing techniques that will even further improve our graphics quality.

[Read More about New Anti-Aliasing Techniques in CRYENGINE]

Currently, we support the following methods:

• SMAA and Temporal Antialiasing
  
• Temporal Supersampling (TSAA)
  
• Supersampling
  

Object Linking (through the Level Explorer)

You can now add objects to a group and link them through the Level Explorer.

Project Launcher Tools Updated Documentation

Finally, in release 5.4 we bring you some updated documentation for the Project Launcher Tools.

And that, is that, dear CryENGINEERS. Big update indeed and many new features to test and improvements to weave into your workflows. We can't wait to hear all about your feedback of the new build and have established a dedicated CE 5.4 feedback thread, here . Keep using the Crash Reporter of course, if necessary and submit your Pull Requests through GitHub.

Some features didn't make it into 5.4 although we worked very hard to make it happen. But we'll keep you updated on our progress and future updates to CRYENGINE for sure, so keep an eye on our blog, the official forum and of course, Facebook & Twitter.

You can read the full Release Highlights and Change List in our CRYENGINE 5.4 Documentation pages .

- The CRYENGINE Team