ARES Security Corporation has announced AVERT 7, which improves the software’s modeling capability with the use of the COLLADA model format. This format greatly enhances the re-usability of existing models in both open source and propriety data sources as well as use 2D & 3D geometry from existing data stores such as computer-aided design (CAD) and geographic information systems (GIS). AVERT visually depicts, analyzes and optimizes physical security.

Autodesk has introduced Maya LT, an affordably priced but powerful 3D animation tool for indie game developers. Through support for FBX export, Maya LT can be used for game engines like Unity Engine and Unreal Engine and content creation for Second Life. The FBX converter can export from Maya LT into Collada DAE format.

Dr Rémi Arnaud from AMD offers a great review the WebGL community and a round up of just how fast WebGL is catching on, from SIGGRAPH 2013. “The SIGGRAPH 2013 WebGL BOF definitely had the kind of energy and vibrant community that I took for granted when at Silicon Graphics, but have since learned is rare. WebGL is an enabler;” writes Remi.

The Vanda Engine allows you to import COLLADA scenes made in 3ds Max and Maya. The Vanda Engine also allows you to import the PhysX static and dynamic rigid bodies made in 3ds Max and Maya. Designers can export whole scenes including animations, cameras, textures, meshes, etc and import it to Vanda to enjoy their interactive scene.

The COLLADA Work Group invites you to attend the COLLADA/glTF BOF at SIGGRAPH 2013. The meeting will be on Wednesday July 24th at 2PM in the California Ballroom A&B at the Hilton Anaheim. There is a great line up for speakers, news and presentations.

• glTF updates and roadmap
  Fabrice Robinet - COLLADA Working Group Chair
• OpenCOLLADA upgrade
  Uli Klumpp - Smith Micro
• COLLADA and AutomationML
  Fabrice Robinet - COLLADA Working Group Chair
• Integrating glTF and Three.js
  Tony Parisi - SkyBox Networks
• glTF in Cesium
  Patrick Cozzi - Analytical Graphics Inc. and University of Pennsylvania
• Rest 3D
  Remi Arnaud - AMD

Turbulenz developers are proud to announce that we have released the Turbulenz HTML5 game engine as open source under the standard MIT license. The open source project is available on GitHub.

METAVERSE Technology LLC launches a 3D printing exchange platform on w3dc.com. 3D print objects are available in the COLLADA file format which is supported by most of the available 3D printers and online print services.

The COLLADA working group announces that it has delivered on key objectives agreed with the COLLADA community over the last year. By working with NetAllied, the OpenCOLLADA open-source importer/exporter has been significantly upgraded to provide proven, robust operation and hosted on GitHub for free and easy adoption by tools vendors and the COLLADA community. The OpenCOLLADA SDK offers direct write and parsing import capabilities, and robust support for full COLLADA import/export, which is superior to many commercial solutions. The COLLADA working group also announced the formation of the new “glTF” project to define a final stage OpenGL Transmission Format to enable rapid delivery and loading of 3D content by OpenGL®, OpenGL ES or WebGL™ APIs. More details are available in the press release.

The Khronos™ Group today announces that COLLADA™ 1.5.0 has been published as an official ISO standard to provide a reliable, long-term international standard for 3D asset authoring and interchange. ISO SC4 TC184 has published ISO/PAS 17506 to enable developers to create tools to process COLLADA resources to import to or export from digital content creation (DCC) applications, 3D interactive applications and tool chains, prototyping tools and real-time visualization applications.

The Khronos Group announces that the full COLLADA Test Suite is now ported to GitHub and is free to use to exhaustively test the quality of any COLLADA importer/exporter, with a full tutorial on how to use the test suite.

METAVERSE Technology has launched a new marketplace website for 3D software objects used in the gaming industry, the architecture business, by education providers or users of virtual worlds. The web 3d community is based on both the widely accepted COLLADA format for 3D objects, and standard image file formats for textures. This service is for professional and private 3D artists and graphics designers to market their web3D objects.

Rita Turkowski has written a series of articles on WebGL and COLLADA.

Flare3D engine lets you create 3D content quickly for Flash. Flare3D has just announced it has started working on an HTML5 and WebGL version. The Flare3D self proclaimed mission is to provide Professional workflow to create next-gen 3D web and mobile based applications! – same tools, same workflow, same file format!

Systems Tool Kit (STK) is a free 2D and 3D modeling environment for evaluating system performance. STK 10 now supports COLLADA FX.