Collada.NET is a reliable and robust solution for reading, manipulating, and saving collada scenes, animations or models in .NET applications including vertex manipulation, texture library access, support for animation keys, and more. The extensible 100% C# COLLADA reader and writer that eliminates the need to marshal in from the COLLADA DOM. While trying to code a 100% C# toolset, it didn’t take long for us to tire with the constant need and complexity of marshaling in from the COLLADA DOM. We scoured the web searching for a .NET solution, preferably in C#, that would enable us to more easily read, write and manipulate data but never found anything we were completely happy with. We decided to create our own .NET solution in C#.
We’re using our COLLADA.net library in our MogBox tool to reprocess complex 3D content as seen in this demo video. Our COLLADA.net library made it possible for us to build this strictly C# tool that truly accomplishes some amazing feats reprocessing complex 3D content. We believe in this community and that through sharing technology, the whole can become stronger. We simply can’t express how much we’ve enjoyed being able to stay in a .net environment without having to marshal anything. We hope that by releasing our solution, others will be able to get further in their own development efforts more quickly. You can learn more about our COLLADA.net solution on our web page.
Google SketchUp will switch to COLLADA for its official file format in the upcoming free version of SketchUp. John Bacus, SketchUp Product Manager, wrote “In our next release, we’re going to make COLLADA an official first-class format for all modelers. You’ll be able to import and export COLLADA models, as well as COLLADA models wrapped up in the KMZ format for Google Earth, with any version of SketchUp.”
A member of the COLLADA message boards has written a detailed tutorial for programmers on implementing Skeletal Animations. Using COLLADA along with C++ and OpenGL, this tutorial will start a programmer with a high level overview in reading and understanding COLLADA file formats, through to a complete implementation using C++ and OpenGL.
MacResearch has posted part two in their series of OpenCL tutorials that we first spoke of here. This second installment gives an overview of OpenCL Objects and the steps involved in running an OpenCL application.
Nokia’s new N900 pocket computer is built around the powerful ARM Cortex-A8 processor, with up to 1GB of application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration and true multi-tasking as on a PC. Other hardware highlights include a high-res WVGA touchscreen, full physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 32GB of storage expandable up to 48GB with a microSD card, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, built-in A-GPS, an FM transmitter, and up to 9 hours of talk time.
PyOpenCL has been released. This OpenCL wrapper for Python has complete documentation and a wiki setup. Key features of PyOpenCL are: object cleanup tied to lifetime of objects; the full power of OpenCL’s API at your disposal with every obscure get_info() query and all CL calls are accessible; automatic error checking; base layer is written in C++; complete documentation; a liberal open-source and free for commercial, academic, and private use under the MIT/X11 license. If you have feedback on this wrapper, you can contribute to a live discussion in the Khronos Message Boards.
With the launch of Snow Leopard this Friday, now is the time to start getting revved up for some of the new technologies coming with this release. One of them, OpenCL. MacResearch.org has done a great overview of what OpenCL is and a beginners tutorial on how it works and how to use it.
AMD Architect Benedict Gaster recently wrote an ‘Hello World’ tutorial providing a simple introduction to OpenCL. “OpenCL is a young technology, and, while a specification has been published, there are currently few documents that provide a basic introduction with examples. This article helps make OpenCL easier to understand and implement.”
The Khronos Group will be participating at this years ARM techcon3 conference in Santa Clara on October 23rd. The presentation is scheduled for Friday October 23rd from 3 - 3:45PM in Room 207. Exact details of the talk are forthcoming.
Members of the Khronos Group will be presenting a half day tutorial at Hot Chips 21 this August 23rd 2009 between 1:30 and 5:30 in the Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University California. The authors include Neil Trevett from NVIDIA, Mike Houston from AMD, Tim Mattson from Intel, Chris Lamb from NVIDIA, Eric Schenk from Electronic Arts and Kari Pulli from Nokia. Registration fees range from students at $95 to non-members at $220 for the Tutorials. Registration fees for Tutorials include a printed set of tutorial notes, continental breakfast, lunch, coffee break, and invitation to the evening Wine and Cheese Reception on Sunday, August 23, 2009.
Intel announced that it has acquired RapidMind. RapidMind, a framework for expressing data-parallel computations from within C++ and executing them on multicore processors. RapidMind was founded five years ago to commercialize a University of Waterloo programming system called Sh. RapidMind will continue to sell its platform and support existing customers.
3DVIA now supports Collada’s DAE format for their library of 3D models. Downloading DAE format 3D models includes any model you create in 3DVIA Shape, which is a great quick tool for creating 3D content. This content can now be used in most digital content applications like Adobe Photoshop and 3D applications used for film and gaming.
COLLADA has announced the winners of the COLLADA Contest. Congratulations go out to all of our winners and a big thank you to everyone who participated. The Grand Prize winner is Chuck Han and Dan Dan Halabe from Navicad.com. The rest of the winners can be viewed here.
Khronos has posted the Siggraph 2009 COLLADA BOF presentation slides and the OpenGL BOF presentation slides. The OpenGL BOF slides include an overview on OpenGL 3.2, OpenGL ES, WebGL, GLSL and gDEBugger. The COLLADA slides include a COLLADA Conformance overview, COLLADA Vision, Project Wonderland, Sirikata—a next generation open source virtual world—and the COLLADA Contest Winners.