cryTools: Control Panel

Control Panel Rollout General Overview

The control panel is a place where you can set personal preferences specific to your workflow. It is broken up into four main sections Art, Animation, Misc, and Debug Info.

Art

Check for Crytek shader at export [Default: ON]
With this enabled, when the export button is pressed in the cryExport utility rollout, cryTools will loop through all objects that are in the current export list and check all of their materials and submaterials. cryTools will generate a warning if it finds any non 'Crytek' materials or any object with no defined material.

Re-parent biped twist bones at export [Default: ON]
Biped forearm twist bones are parented to the upper arm for some weird reason. They still work if you reparent them to the lower arm, but on load they are always reparented to the upper arm. With this enabled, the twist bones will be re-parented to the lower arm on character export. This way they do not receive weird double transforms ingame.
Update: This also reparents upper arm twists now

Animation

Load Old Animation tools
When checked, the original CryAnimTools will load when 'CryAnimation' is slected from the drop down.

Do not unparent $weapon_bone children at export [Default: OFF]
I merged our 'animation rigs' into the main character Max file, because any time the main character was updated, then the animation rig would need to be updated. Now we animate on the actual character Max file. Because of this, there are guns parented to the arms that you can cycle through from within the Animation Tools. It is important that these guns not export in the hierarchy. With this option checked, the weapon objects will be exported, as skeletal nodes.

Update: The following have been removed, but the commented code exists
Auto-update pose collections on max file open [Default: OFF]
With this enabled, cryTools will auto-update pose collections when you load a file. This is useful when an animation team has a pose collection file somewhere on the network or in P4. You can also click 'Get Latest P4' to manually sync to the latest pose collections from the control panel without restarting.

Sync pose collections at p4 start [Default: OFF]
In addition to the above, each animator can have their pose collections updated from a P4 location every time he opens a maxfile.

Misc

Suppress all export warnings [Default: OFF]
This is for advanced users. It disabled all warnings for shader problems, hierarchy issues; everything. You really shouldn't enable this unless working on some test items and getting annoyed with export warnings.

Show splash screen [Default: ON]
You can disable the splash screen here. It is a good idea to leave the splash screen up as it has some information like your local build/latest build and the version number, it is also up only during the time it takes to load/initialize the tools. The cryTools splash screen can be closed immediately by clicking anywhere on the screen, you can also click menu items and things while it is up.

Update/Uninstall/Rollback

Reload/Install Updates From Your Local Build
This will reload cryTools, this is useful if you have copied over new scripts, or updated your scripts via PerForce, AlienBrain, etc...

Retreive Latest Tools/Sync
When this is pressed, it uses the selected option to look for tools updates. You need to set up the script to work with your P4 or AlienBrain servers.

Rollback Exporter
This rolls back to the last version of the exporter

Uninstall Crytools
This uninstalls the scripts

LOCAL/LATEST Build
This shows the local and latest builds. The latest build is queried from a build server, you will have to point it at your server.

Debug Info

dump/remove callbacks
If you click 'dump callbacks', all the callbacks cryTools has registered will be echoed to the Maxscript Listener. If you click 'remove callbacks' nothing will happen, you have to right click it to remove all callbacks cryTools has set. To reload the callbacks, you must restart max, click 'Check/Install updates from your latest build' in updateTools, or open the tools that registered the callback (like riggingTools or animationTools)

dump crytek global vars
This will dump any global variables set by cryTools. Crytools uses a global struct now and does not set as many global vars

Various debug info
Here you can check for problems. I echo out a lot of the vars that, when missing or improperly set, can cause cryTools not to work or load. I will quickly go through them:

MAX VERSION: Self explanatory

MAX PATH: The 3D Studio Max install path

PROJECT: Internally, this is taken from your P4 root folder name. At Crytek, we use a naming scheme like "Game02", "Game04", etc. This allows cryTools to be largely project independent when syncing tools and things on P4.

DOMAIN: This is returned from a cryTools function that returns the domain of the network the cryTools users machine is on. This is useful when creating internal tools, it is not secure, but it keeps debug stuff and hacks out of the UI.

BUILD PATH: This is the location of the build on the users local machine.

CRYEXPORT.INI PATH: The location of the cryexport.ini file

CRYTOOLS.INI PATH: The location of the crytools.ini file where the control panel settings and various other things are stored.

EDITOR PATH: The local path to the editor.

ROLLBACK STATUS: If 'true', cryTools is currently operating in a 'rolled back' state, and will not attempt to get latest versions of the exporter and tools at max start. 'False' indicates normal operation.

LOCAL BUILD #: This is the number of the local build on the users HD.

LATEST BUILD #: This is the latest build number on the server (procedural builds)

LATEST BUILD ON SERVER: This is the filename of the latest build on the server.