COLLADA already supports exchanging shaders between 3D tools, however some applications and game engines are not capable of exporting and importing shaders to and from the COLLADA .dae format. This COLLADA tutorial will walk you through the steps supported Cinema 4D.

glTF is an up and coming format for transmitting 3D models, tailored for WebGL and OpenGL they like to think of it as a 3D model codec. There’s three.js and Node.js support, as well as a COLLADA and separate FBX converter. There’s more explanation of glTF in the presentation at the WebGL BOF. Compression progress here, discussion here. Special thanks to Patrick Cozzi and the folks over at Real-Time Rendering Blog.

The creators of Vanda Engine have released a set of tutorials covering conversions from Maya and 3ds Max to COLLADA. Vanda Engine is open source and freely available for all to use.

Cesium uses the web-friendly glTF format for 3D models. Cesium provides an online COLLADA-to-glTF converter that allows us to drag and drop a COLLADA model and its textures to produce a glTF model for use in Cesium. This blog post is a series of tips for authoring 3D models and then exporting them to COLLADA to get the best performance and robustness.

Seekscale recently interviewed the COLLADA workgroup chair Fabrice Robinet about the COLLADA file format standard.

Luxion KeyShot v5.1 is a conceptual design software that enables designers to import and enhance exisitng 3D models, creating variations for manufacturing, marketing or customer approval. KeyShots designers are able to import COLLADA files, as well as BIP, Alias WIRE, PTC Creo, Rhinoceros, SketchUp, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Pro/ENGINEER, IGES, STEP, OBJ, 3ds, and FBX data. Users can paint, modify lighting, adjust the camera angle, edit and select background to create an image in real time using these imported models.

The COLLADA to glTF converter online tool allows you to convert your COLLADA models to glTF for use with Cesium. Simply drag-and-drop your COLLADA file (.dae) and any images it references by zipping them together. A self-contained glTF file will be downloaded once the conversion is finished, and a model preview will be shown below.

LibreOffice 4.3 now supports inserting 3D models in the glTF format into presentations (using libgltf). Currently this feature is only available for Linux and Windows. There is also limited support for 3D models in .dae and .kmz formats using collada2gltf.

Going to SIGGRAPH? Be sure to drop into one of our seven Birds of a Feather events, all followed up by our famous BOF Blitz™ After Party. We’ve got some great news and amazing presentations waiting for you.

Blue Marble Geographics announced the release of the Global Mapper Software Development Kit (SDK) version 15.2. This interim release features a significant improvement in the organization and quantity of online data, new functionality for transforming LiDAR point clouds, and support for several new 3D model file types, including COLLADA .dae format.

Vanda Engine 1.3 source code is now available on SourceForge and on Github. Vanda Engine 1.3 is based on the COLLADA RT project (using COLLADA DOM) and can import COLLADA 1.4 format. There are many bug fixes and several new features have been added to allow import of most of the features of COLLADA 1.4 including animation clips, multiple UV sets and loading cameras. OpenGL 3.0 is being used to render the scenes.

Cesium has introduced full support for glTF models. A demo with example aircraft, ground vehicle, and character models is available. There is also a tutorial on how to use the Cesium API for glTF, and a tool to convert COLLADA to glTF (based on COLLADA2GLTF).

The schedules for the COLLADA, glTF and WebCL meetups are now online. COLLADA has a great line up of speakers including the COLLADA work group chair Fabrice Robinet, Tony Parisi from Vizi and co-creator of the COLLADA technology, Remi Arnaud.

MontageJS has introduced a new WebGL-based component for the MontageJS framework. The 3D view component for MontageJS offers an abstraction layer for WebGL and aims to make the individual elements of a 3D scene just as easy to manipulate as conventional HTML elements in the page DOM. If your browser has WebGL enabled, you can try out a demo here. The MontageJS 3D view component is designed to load and display glTF content. The COLLADA working group provides Mac and Windows open source converters to translate COLLADA files into glTF.