Feeling Viewer 3.03 released - Designed for COLLADA manipulation and playback
Feeling Software has just released version 3.03 of its Feeling Viewer. Designed explicitly to support everything in the COLLADA 3D file format, the Feeling Viewer has advanced shading effects, complex character animations (e.g. skinning and morphing) and physics. If you're an artist looking for a good viewer to display your complex animated scenes, look no further: this is the most advanced 3D viewer available commercially. Your animated models will look just as good or better in the Feeling Viewer than in the original CAD or DCC application. The Feeling Viewer is not just for playback: the underlying Feeling 3D Engine is extensible and has been integrated in several 3rd party applications to enhance them with fast, top-notch 3D graphics with relatively little programming effort. The Feeling Viewer now runs on Linux, Mac OS X, Internet Explorer, Powerpoint and many more applications. This is accompanied by many new features including complex particle systems, trimmed NURBS surfaces and environment mapping.
‘Mobile 3D Graphics: Learning 3D Graphics with the Java Micro Edition’ Covers Java Programming on Mobile Devices
The book introduces you to the world of 3D graphics with the Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR 184). It covers the basics of 3D programming, but also advanced topics such as quaternion math, environment mapping, and creating articulated characters. You will also learn how to create 3D content in in the open-source tool Blender, import the artwork into your application, and then tailor the export to meet your needs. The skills learnt in the book will easily extend to other APIs, including OpenGL ES with JSR 239 and the MascotCapsule V3 API, which are both featured in the appendix. Check out the free sample chapter and more information on the author's Web site
Photoshop CS3 Extended to support COLLADA model import and texture editing
Adobe announced Photoshop CS3 Extended which will allow designers to leverage the Photoshop image editing toolset and paint engine when editing 3D content including COLLADA format models. This means that artists can can perform 3D model visualization and texture editing and see the result on the 3D model all within Photoshop and then update the 3D models using the edited textures (that are saved back to disk). This also offers a new tool for Google Earth users, since they can now take their 3D model from Sketchup, and paint on it using Photoshop, before uploading it to Google Earth, all in the same COLLADA format.
CLManager lets you copy, merge and manage COLLADA nodes and libraries
CLManager is a utility program designed to aid in the content management of COLLADA DAE files. Nodes can be copied, removed and rearranged. Libraries can be created, removed, sorted or merged. Node ids and their references can also be changed. Two COLLADA files can be merged either by importing individual nodes within the libraries or by importing whole libraries from another COLLADA file. This joins two other applications from Pinecost Software, the free CollView COLLADA file viewer and C2X Collada To X3D Converter.
Futuremark 3DMarkMobile JSR 184 enables valid comparisons between Java M3G and native OpenGL ES 3D Graphics performance
3DMarkMobile JSR 184 is Futuremark’s port of their industry standard 3DMarkMobile ES 1.1 benchmark to the Java Mobile 3D Graphics (M3G) environment. 3DMarkMobile ES 1.1 and 3DMarkMobile JSR 184 share Identical test workloads, which are deployed through Futuremark’s OpenGL ES 1.1 engine in the former, and the company’s JSR 184 engine in the latter. This design enables reliable comparisons between native OpenGL ES and Java Mobile 3D performance. Test suites feature high detail 3D game workloads and pixel processing, vertex processing and CPU processing feature tests, plus image quality tests.
Ballistic COLLADA Viewer adds support for textures
Ballistic COLLADA viewer is a simple but efficient free COLLADA viewer, It is written in C++ and uses the OpenGL API for rendering. The new version adds support for textures and can reads models from the Google 3D Warehouse and models exported to .dae from the latest Google SketchUp, or Blender. It features game like navigation for better immersion.
Papervision3D 3D engine for Flash uses COLLADA as import format
PaperVision3D is an open source project that lets you import COLLADA files and render 3D objects in real time using Flash. The 3D Flash engines works with ActionScript 2 and 3, and features linear texture mapping, optimized for rendering speed and quality. This "how to" lets you experiment with creating a simple first person shooter using a COLLADA model and an AS2 class package. Also check out the summary blog which has some great example references.
New Google Earth 4 beta greatly enhances performance for COLLADA models
Google has just released the latest beta for Google Earth 4. Google Earth 4 adds a simpler interface, time animation, enhanced layers, GIS data importing, compressed textures, movie making, and drawing tools. The latest beta adds a progress indicator, real-time GPS tracking, and greatly improved performance for COLLADA models (textured buildings). Available for OS X, Linux and Windows XP.
Anark Studio 4.0 3D authoring and visualization software adds support for COLLADA
Anark Studio is a Windows rapid application authoring tool for creating interactive 3D content. The new v4.0 adds enhanced speed and memory management, improved workflow, optimized play-back and visual enhancements, and import of Max and Maya animations via integrated COLLADA 1.4.1 support.
Softimage Asia Tour 2006 to feature COLLADA
Softimage will be demonstating SOFTIMAGE|XSI and SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT v.1.5 in Seoul (Dec 5th, 2006) , Shanghai (Dec 8th, 2006) and Tokyo Dec 12th, 2006). AMD will be discussing workstations tailored to the CG market. COLLADA will be shown as a way to offer interoperability and improved collaboration among teams in mixed-software studio environment, allowing Softimage artists and technical directors to create and work easily in next-generation game development pipeline.