Movie demos of COLLADA Physics and interoperability
Three new streaming Flash videos of demos from GDC 2006 show interoperability of physical simulations using COLLADA 1.4.
- Ragdoll simulation using Nima PhysX plug-in for Maya
- Nima PhysX plug-in for Maya with support for COLLADA Physics
- Exporting rigid body car crash scene from Maya to COLLADA
Collada 1.4.0 Plug-in for Blender (alpha v0.1)
The Collada 1.4.0 Plug-in for Blender is a script to import from and export to the Collada 1.4 format in Blender, the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback . The plugin is a python script which runs through the Blender Python Interpretor and consists of two parts: The Collada 1.4.0 API is the converter between a Collada XML file (*.dae) and an object oriented representation of the Collada schema in Python. The Translator converts the Collada structure to Blender and vice versa. This early v0.1 release imports/exports geometry, lights, cameras, transformations and parent relationships.
Feeling Software to implement COLLADA importer for Unreal Engine 3
Feeling Software is implementing a COLLADA importer for Unreal Engine 3 using FCollada. FCollada is an open-source C++ library which offers support for COLLADA interoperability (used in ColladaMaya and ColladaMax for interoperability with any COLLADA compliant DCC tool).
COLLADA movie demos of game pipeline interoperability using FX Composer 2, Softimage, and 3ds MAX with COLLADA as the glue between the tools
Three video of demos from GDC 2006 show interoperability of game assets using COLLADA 1.4.
- Workflows using NVIDIA's FX Composer 2 and common Digital Content Creation (DCC) tools like Maya, connected by the COLLADA interchange format.
- Game pipeline interoperability using FX Composer 2, Softimage Maya, & Softimage XSI with COLLADA as the glue between the tools.
- How 3ds Max can be inserted into a COLLADA workflow where FX Composer is used for the illumination and HLSL shaders.
COLLADA 1.4 officially released including COLLADA FX and COLLADA Physics
The COLLADA 1.4 data digital asset schema is the first cross-platform standard shader and effects definition written in XML and includes core features such as mesh geometry, skinning, morphing, animation and data validation. This new version of the digital asset schema will enable content creation pipelines that can automatically condition and scale 3D geometry and texture assets for real-time playback on a wide diversity of platforms including hand-held devices.
COLLADA FX is the industry's first cross-platform standard for defining visual effects that targets both high-end systems such as gaming consoles as well as embedded and hand-held systems. Effects may be authored to support many different profiles which may include the use of the OpenGL Shading Language, NVIDIA's Cg shading language, or OpenGL ES 1.1 state setting and texture combiners.
COLLADA Physics is the industry's first open standard data definition for physics effects including rigid body dynamics, rag dolls, constraints and collision volumes enabling data interchange between AGEIA (Novodex), Havok, Meqon, ODE and other game physics middle-ware.
Khronos and members of the COLLADA working group are developing open source example code for COLLADA and will release a COLLADA conformance test suite during 2006. There are already COLLADA 1.4 exporters for leading tools such as 3DStudio, Maya, Blender, SOFTIMAGE, and Lightwave.
New members Emdigo, Feeling Software and Softimage have joined Khronos in order to develop the COLLADA standard and integrate it with other Khronos APIs.
SOFTIMAGE|XSIv 5.1 adds COLLADA 1.4 import and export as well as support for shaders using COLLADA FX
SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.5.1 now includes COLLADA 1.4 support. COLLADA 1.4 is a standards-based interchange medium that enables 3D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets - enabling multiple software packages to be combined into extremely powerful pipelines. The new v5.1 also supports COLLADA FX for real-time shader support
xNormal v3.0 normal/ambient occlusion mapper supports COLLADA 1.4 import
xNormal is a .NET v2.0 application that creates normal/ambient occlusion maps (DOT3 bump mapping textures) from a very high polygon model and fits it into a low polygon model. It supports import of COLLADA 1.4 data.
COLLADA 1.4 specification available in Japanese
COLLADA defines an XML-based schema to enable 3D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets without loss of information, enabling interactive 3D industry content tools to be combined into extremely powerful tool chains. The specification is now available in Japanese (think PlayStation 3!).
Game Developers Conference (March 20-24) to feature OpenGL ES and COLLADA tutorials, demos, and sessions
The Game Developers Conference (GDC), March 20-24, 2006 is the official trade event "by game developers for developers" of computer, console, mobile, arcade, online games, and location based entertainment. This year there will be a number of session and tutorials on OpenGL ES, Shader development and COLLADA. The sessions are designed to help mobile game developers look ahead at how they may need to modify their game development and design considerations. They introduce them them to OpenGL ES, OpenGL ES 2.0 shaders, hardware accelerated JSR-184, and using COLLADA in a mobile 3D toolchain, including PS3.
COLLADA 1.4 DOM released as open source, enabling developers to easily add COLLADA import / export to their applications
The COLLADA DOM is a comprehensive framework for the development of COLLADA applications and provides a C++ programming interface to load, query, and translate COLLADA instance data. The DOM loads COLLADA data into a runtime database consisting of structures that mirror those defined in the COLLADA schema. These runtime structures are auto-generated from the current schema, eliminating inconsistency and error. Developers can directly use the data structures loaded into the COLLADA runtime database within their application so they can easily add import and export capabilities for COLLADA v1.4.0 or COLLADA v1.3.1 documents. This release contains the COLLADA DOM for 1.3.1 and 1.4.0, full documentation, sample code (simple conditioners), and sample data. It is released under an open source license