R&D for the Raining Fire movie project rendered with cryengine :

Render with alpha channel for further compositing

Camera sync in-out with 3ds max or maya

Export passes (render elements) and z-depth

Area shadows (like raytraced shadows not soft shadows)

Blurry reflections

Dual stereo camera option

Depth of field with multiple solutions  including an accurate one that works even with glass

Raytrace quality motion blur (higher than any real-time engine at the time of this writing)

Adjustable vignette
Human characters solution
SSAO - higher quality (comparison and tests soon)

Voxel modeling and painting

Dynamic effects for plants and other objects
Anti-aliasing


Since all my cryengine research, tools and shaders are scattered around I decided to gather some of them here in this blog.
Threads about my movie on crymod and cgsociety.

I will also post updates here  https://www.facebook.com/SebastianAndorFilm

Dirt Shader procedural

 I don't have time anymore to develop this, but since I had a few request, I will post this here.

Download links (on crydev)

DX9 - 7 presets included

DX9 - for rendering with alpha channel - pictures

DX10 - 2 presets only and 7 sliders missing

The included presets 

                               rust

motion blur

For many types of movie shots, the default motion blur included with cryengine, is enough. But many sequences require a higher quality 3d motion blur. For example rotating objects, or blades of grass or leafs passing rapidly in front of the camera. Without a 3d motion blur these would look bad.

Or imagine a tornado made with high speed particles. I will upload a 3d motion blurred cryengine tornado movie in the future.

These insects look bad without 3d motion blur.

gif animation comparison

longer mp4 movie http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6955/y33.mp4

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More proof (low quality for now)

                               animated gif :

Panning the camera behind close objects like foliage or railing or other objects would look bad without a 3d motion blur.

This type of filming usually occur in most movies at some point and if you don't have a raytrace motion blur you will get the artifacts shown in this comparison. 

area shadows

Adjustable Area Shadows (viewport low-res pictures). Correct overlapping shadows - something which is not possible with actual algorithms like Nvidia PCSS. 

more pictures and movies soon

default crysis shadows

     another test with overlapping

larger area shadows. Notice how the teapot handle cast sharp shadow - how it's supposed to. Objects should cast sharp shadows on closer  objects and soft or very soft on farther surfaces

some older tests

anti-aliasing

I made this post because someone was concerned you can't get production quality antialiasing, let's say - with a quality comparable to a Mental Ray render.

click for 1920 resolution picture
(straight render)

                                           
                                                               with some adjustments

         1920 res :  http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/3804/flipped1920effectsv2.jpg

 if needed the antialiasing can be increased further

In fact I can choose between two or three different solutions for AA. And I can even combine them. And if you search crymod.com you can find there other real-time solutions as well.


(when I will finish my current film, I will post again this frame extracted from movie. It will have even better AA)

DOF

Depth of field obtained with z-depth can lead to very high quality dof

Or you can use the real-time solution I posted here 

You can even use different shapes as you can see bellow.

Since it's real-time the quality can decrease depending on how big the bokeh is. But with certain careful chosen values (and small bokeh), the quality can be as good as a post process filter.

car modeled by crymod user vice08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4No43o7zkDQ

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The following solution is a work-in-progress attempt to eliminate the limitations of current dof solutions.

Even with renderers of programs like Maya or 3ds max you have the same kind of limitations when it comes to transparent objects like glass or water or near de-focused objects. The solution would be a true raytraced DOF. But that has a huge disatvantage : a very long render time per frame. That's why when it comes to rendering movies, most will turn to a z-depth post process solution.

The following cryengine renders show a working depth of field even with transparent objects, similar to a raytraced solution. The render time is high, but they are still much faster then ... for example - a Mental Ray render.

near de-focused objects and glass

render with alpha channel

You can use my workflow with the shader posted on Crymod to render models with alpha channel.

The palm is a regular palm from Crysis, rendered with alpha channel and composited in this real photo. The shadows were also rendered in a separate shadow pass and composited.

voxel modeling painting

Voxel modeling and painting test with the default tools included in cryengine sandbox editor.