COLLADA

[Goldensly]

Hey all,
I came across a 3D asset transport schema called COLLADA. I was curious if anyone has any previous experience with it and could explain what is required from the art side of the system. I've been reading some Wiki's on it but I still having trouble understanding it completely.

[rburke]

Its an attempt at making a universal file format for computer based media. Basically from what i gather it is attempting to set a standard for how media is saved wheter it be 3d models, textures, sounds, video, animations etc. The cool thing is that it is xml based and open source. Currently say your working Maya and z-brush and photoshop. You have to export your models back and forth as obj and your textures need to be psd. Well now say you added some animation to it in maya. Then your pipeline called for you to bring the model into xsi or something. So now you are going to have a hard time brining in the animated model given the constrains of file type compatibility. You could try to export as a FBX but some things just are not going to work right. What collada is trying to do is create a file format that can hold any type of info and be read by all major programs so you can focus entirely on creating artwork and not on getting your assets from one program to another. There has been many attempts at this before but generally a file format and the converters are made in house by the package developers, they get to choose what to support. If this was the case with say web design and there was no standard format then you would have all sorts of problems, and everyone would be working in different formats, and you would need different browsers for different pages etc.
The issue still stands that the developers of the programs need to incorporate Collada format into their software or it will always exists as a plug-in based format.
Since xml is a very very common language, and a web based one, this will lead to all sorts of web enhanced 3d content, that can be incorporated into one universal file format, one that can be read by the browsers your on right now.
It prob has a ways to go before it reaches maturity, but judging by the number of companies who are showing signs of supporting it there is a very good chance it will become a dominant format.
From what i can gather though its really only good for production work and not so much for the final product. Say for a game you are going to want to convert out the assets into one format for models, one for textures, one for baked animations, etc. As loading all of these things to one file is inefficient in a real-time environment, where assets need to be able to change on the fly and being separated would allow for greater flexibility.
Id keep my eyes on this though it seems like it will be very cool. I imagine at some point being able to work ont eh same file in 2 different apps at once. Imagine being able to block a model in maya and sculpt in zbrush and see your changes reflected in both apps just by clicking refresh, sculpting a normal map and watching it update in realtime to a psd you have open in photoshop. All without having to have 5 different plugins. That was long but thats my take on Collada

[rburke]

Oh and something i forgot to mention that is interesting is that you can reference other Docs in a collada file. What I'm getting at is that if you had a model saved as one file and then another model saved as a separate file you would be able to reference that second file in the first without having to create a 3rd combined file. Like if i modeled a dude and then modeled a hat for him. The hat could be in a separate file but i could include a line of text that says the hat is here on his head and it would be able to reference the hat file and place it in the designated position, without me having to combine both files. This is pretty similar to what goes on in a game like fallout 3 where when i change my clothing its not loading a whole new player model its referencing the clothing and placing it in the right place on the model.

[Goldensly]

thanks for the explanation! Very understandable. :D