Twinity is a 3D online world that links the real with the virtual world based on realistic replicas of the world’s most vibrant metropolises in 3D. Twinity will let people upload .dae COLLADA files to include in their own virtual world.

Electric Rain released Swift 3D 6.0 for Mac and Windows, a 3D modeling and animation tool. Swift 3D allows designers to build and export vector and raster-based 3D animations for Macromedia Flash, as well as QuickTime, AVI and other formats. Swift 3D now supports exporting to Papervision and COLLADA .dae formats. Electric Rain is also a sponsor of the ‘Champion the 3D Web using COLLADA’ contest. Electric Rain will be giving away downloadable copies of Swift 3D v6 to the winners of the contest, along with over other great prizings include a grand prize of $5000.

On the Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page, under System Wide Digital Asset Exchange support there is a easily overlooked mention of COLLADA. Users of COLLADA and the file format .dae will be please to see that Preview, OS X’s lightway graphic viewer application, will display .dae files with OpenGL-powered 3D graphics. You will be able to zoom and rotate around a 3D scene and play viewpoint animations. There is a good discussion about this over at idevgames.com

Leadwerks Engine now integrates the COLLADA file format into its content pipeline. Convert COLLADA .dae files to the Leadwerks Game Model Format (.gmf) or just load .dae files directly in the engine.

The Khronos Group, Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative and recently added ElectricRain are sponsoring the ‘Champion the 3D Web using COLLADA’ contest. If you do 3D, and you can create a 3D model, avatar, world or simulation specifically geared toward virtual worlds, then head on over to the COLLADAContest. First prize is $5,000, a guest appearance at a future Immersive Education Initiative in-world (virtual) event, and a downloadable copy of Electric Rain’s Swift 3D. Complete rules can be found here. The contest will draw to close on July 15th and the winner will be announced at this years Siggraph 2009 in New Orleans—attendance is not required.

Remi Arnaud will be speaking on COLLADA at Metaverse U Conference on May 30th. Remi leads the Game Engine Technology team at Intel. This second iteration of the Metaverse U conference will take place at Stanford University this weekend on May 29th and 30th 2009. The goal is to explore the cutting edge applications of virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them.

Bitmanagement announced the latest release of their 3D content viewer BS Contact 7.2 Web 3D. The 3D content viewer now supports all major browsers, IE, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. The 3D internet software implements both the ISO standard definitions X3D and VRML as well as the industry standard COLLADA.

MeshLab is an open source, portable, and extensible system for the processing and editing of unstructured 3D triangular meshes. The system is aimed to help the processing of the typical not-so-small unstructured models arising in 3D scanning, providing a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering and converting this kind of meshes. Meshlab has supported COLLADA since 2006.

The Khronos Group and the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative are thrilled to announce the first-ever COLLADA content development contest. In concert with the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative, Khronos invites you to champion the application of 3D technology from video games and digital media services towards virtual worlds and Immersive Education. All entries must contain original content made for any 3D web based application that can import models stored in either COLLADA .dae documents or .zae archive formats. Your content will consist of a 3D model, avatar, world or simulation specifically geared toward virtual worlds and deployable in Immersive Education platforms. First prize is five thousand dollars. There are no entry fees, so why not enter today. Complete rules can be found here.

The Khronos Group has announced that it will hold a DevU tutorial at this years Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Khronos DevU will cover four major topics: OpenCL, OpenGL, COLLADA, and the Khronos “Mobile API Ecosystem. This will be an all day event held on Tuesday March 24 2009 in partnership with the GDC 2009. Admittance to the session is available to all registered Mobile GDC and regular GDC conference attendees.

Web3D.org has announced a deadline extension for a call for papers to the 13th International Symposium on 3D Web Technology. The annual Web3D Symposium is a major event, which unites researchers, developers, experimenters, and content creators in a dynamic learning environment. Attendees share and explore methods of using, enhancing, or creating new 3D Web and Multimedia technologies, such as (but not limited to) X3D, VRML, COLLADA, Croquet, MPEG4, MPEG7, Java3D, and Canvas3D. The symposium will also focus on recent trends such as interactive 3D graphics and applications on mobile devices. Authors are invited to submit their work (short or full papers) for review by the international Program Committee. Both research and applications papers are of interest to Web3D 2008. The papers must be innovative and contribute to the advancement of 3D Multimedia technologies on the Web. For more information please visit the Web3D 2008 Symposium call for papers home page now.

Web3D has made a call for papers for the Web3D 2008 International Symposium at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, California. The Web3d Symposium will address a wide range of topics on creating and using new 3D Web and Multimedia technologies like X3D, VRML, COLLADA, Croquet, MPEG4, MPEG7, Java3D, and Canvas3D. Authors are invited to submit their research and applications papers be they short or full papers for review by the international Program Committee. The papers must be innovative and contribute to the advancement of 3D Multimedia technologies on the Web.

The Tokyo Mobile Developer University focused on Gaming & Media, will be held April 28th, 2006. Presentations and demos cover OpenKODE (a native content platform providing source portability for games and media applications), OpenGL ES (3D for mobile), OpenSL ES (audio for mobile), OpenMAX (streaming media), OpenVG (accelerated Flash, PDF and SVG), and COLLADA (digital asset application interoperability). Sessions are free but space is limited.

(PDF news release in Japanese)