When comparing Blender vs CryEngine, the Slant community recommends Blender for most people. In the question“What are the best game engines for beginners and non-programmers?” Blender is ranked 10th while CryEngine is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Blender is:
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Pro Wide import and export format support
Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.
Pro Has a powerful rendering engine
Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!
Pro Python extensibility
Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.
Pro Powerful animation suite
Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.
Pro Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling
Pro Regular release schedule
Releases are made every ~3 months.
Pro Sculpting and 3D painting features
Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.
Pro Includes video editing & compositing tools
Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.
Pro Node based modeling support
Pro Keyboard shortcuts
Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.
Pro Very useful for a freelancer
It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.
Pro Has a large community
There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.
Pro Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic
The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.
Pro Very versatile
You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.
Pro Generative geometry using nodes
Pro C# integration
CryEngine has some C#template and also C# based system to write your function/ideas in to your game.
Pro DX12, Vulkan support
CryEngine 5.4 now supports DX12 and Vulkan
Pro Features allowing for realistic weather effects
Cry Engine has volumetric fog rendering which allows for realistic cloud shadows that actually render shadows onto the fog itself. Combined with their time of day system, it's possible to create incredibly realistic weather effects. On top of this, color grading allows user to post process pallets allowing them to change the color tone for different type weather, such as using a deep dark blue for rain.
Pro There is already a built-in AI
It can shoot, walk on patrol points, can see the player and so on.
Pro VR support
Cryengine (starting on Cryengine V) has Virtual Reality support. Developers can create games with VR support for multiple platforms: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Pro Dynamic water rendering
Cry Engine has realistic water effects that even simulate ocean physics. Features such as waves that respond to global wind, and dynamic water volume tessellation allow for some of the most realistic water effects available to a game developer. The engine also takes into account LOD (level of detail) on water geometry to allow it to stay performant for water at a distance.
Pro Realistic rendering of vegetation and landscapes
Where Cry Engine really shines is with rendering scenes of nature. The Crysis games feature incredibly detailed vegetation and weather effects and it's the Cry Engine that enables that. The engine has many features to create a cohesive realistic looking world. Dynamic water effects allow users to have beautiful oceans, fog and cloud effects allow for realistic weather, and a plethora of lighting effects optimized for natural looking scenes make Cry Engine one of the best engines for creating vast beautiful landscapes.
By having all these features built together from the ground up, Cry Engine is capable of doing more complex effects more efficiently, than other engines that didn't have these effects planned from their inception.
Pro All platforms, including next-gen consoles, are supported
Supports miltiple platforms including: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Wii U, PC, iOS, and Android.
Pro Versatile flow diagram script model
Flow graphs resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish.
Pro Dedicated channel for Q&A
Crytek has launched a dedicated Q&A forum for everything Cryengine related. It's called Cryengine Answers and it's a community dedicated to sharing and answering any question related to Cryengine.
Pro Online marketplace available
The Cryengine marketplace is an online marketplace which enables developers to access and use individual assets from thousands of materials, sounds and 3D objects created by the community. Even Crytek's own library assets are available there.
Pro Advanced volumetric cloud system
Cryengine has an optimized volumetric cloud system for Virtual Reality to give clouds full 3D spatial rendering. This ensures a high rendering quality with a minimal performance hit.
Pro Terrain tools are great
Pro Disallows bad practices in asset creation
Simply by looking at the RC log when exporting can greatly improve your work. Cryengine doesn't handhold you constantly and helps greatly with avoiding bad practices in asset creation.
Cons
Con Too many possibilities, no unified workflow
The operations are not optimized enough for specific tasks.
Con The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics
Con Difficult learning curve
Blender has a history of being unintuitive, but the 2.8 overhaul made the program far easier for beginners to pick up, and changes continue to be made to further improve the experience. However, there is still a learning curve.
Con Not good for Industrial Design because it uses average vertex normals
You can not create a hard surface with a radius continuity degree along a surface using a specific radius value.
Con Vertex normal issues on edges after boolean operations.
After creating a simple boolean operation the vertex normals are broken. A lot of work to fix the issue and you loos surface continuity.
Con Bad vertex normal after boolean operations
Does not handle well polygon intersections. And need tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers.
Con Does not handle NURBs
Is not capable of real hard surface for industrial design because is not able to reproduce surface continuity degree as a NURBs does and average vertex normal destroy surface radius.
Con Poor particle system
The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements.
Con Steep learning curve
Except for basic FPS games getting anything done will require solid knowledge of C++, Flash, ActionScript and Lua.
Con No GNU/Linux support
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Con Hard to develop games other than FPS
Cryengine is a great engine to be used for developing an FPS (and it's relatively easy to do so). But if you want to develop another type of game, it requires at least advanced knowledge of C++ and Visual Studio.
Con No Mac OS X support
Con Restrictive license
Cryengine is not restrictive anymore just more personalized. The model is Pay what you want and if you want more you get a membership with them. Or private support, help and lessons directly from the CryEngine team.