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tell me about collada
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tell me about collada // Roundtable
Post by Burnart // Aug 7, 2007, 1:16pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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The collada interchange format has had quite a few mentions this year and now it is an export format for trueSpace it sparks my interest. I could do a web search and hit wikipedia etc but seeing as I use tS I'd rather have tS users thoughts and experiences - the question simply is what is the benefit of collada over other formats? Also, what about collada import, surely a really useful interchange method needs to work both ways will tS get collada import in the near future? |
Post by RichLevy // Aug 7, 2007, 2:25pm
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RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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The TS implementation of Collada is a very complete one. I am not sure how closely it follows the standard (v1.41), I do know that it exports out geometry, textures and some shaders colors, you also get uv's, and animation (BVh, animations move across nicely). I have tested it in seveal programs. The Collada spec says you can transfer physics and particle simulations... though I would not expect that to work. Where or not it works great is also up to the recieving program. That could be the sticky point to this... but a Collada file is nothing more than an XML file, so you can edit the file yourself if you have to. I have had to edit Collada files that I wanted to bring into XSI as an example.
If Caligari completes the process by giving us a great importer, Collada can be a great replacement for the obj format.
I unfortunately do not use it in a production environment so I am interested in hearing what others are running into.
Rich |
Post by prodigy // Aug 7, 2007, 2:38pm
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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If Caligari completes the process by giving us a great importer, Collada can be a great replacement for the obj format.
Rich
Great Replacement?? :confused:
Great Additional sounds better.. :o |
Post by RichLevy // Aug 7, 2007, 9:41pm
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RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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It's all a matter of perspective.
Addition is probably a better choice of words... but given an importer for TS and a way to move geometry into and out of other formats I would use Collada more than I would obj.
Rich |
Post by nowherebrain // Aug 8, 2007, 1:09am
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nowherebrain
Total Posts: 1062
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No, it isn't. Obj is totaly different. Almost every app supports obj...even XSI(cause it works and is old)...I don't own(excluding tS) a single app that accepts collada, but all my apps support .obj. If I don't get my obj import/export I will be VERY dissapointed(understatement....VERY, VERY..Angry). |
Post by transient // Aug 8, 2007, 1:38am
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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What's wrong with luuv?
It's probably the most stable .obj importer/exporter I've used. Other apps I have don't always like reading each others .obj files, but I've found running them through luuv first seems to fix this.
I think Collada will definitely replace .obj in the medium term, but right now .obj is still the king. |
Post by Steinie // Aug 8, 2007, 4:21am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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Nothing wrong with luuv if you love the Modeler side of things. When the Bridge goes so does luuv. (Currently) |
Post by TomG // Aug 8, 2007, 4:47am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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LUUV also doesnt import normal maps, since tS didnt support normal maps back then. It does support them now, and OBJ supports them too - so a reworked import / export for OBJ would be useful for that alone.
Sometimes textures and materials weren't translated too well too. So improvements could be made.
Finally it would be nice to have it integrated and not a plugin, and to have it work directly inside workspace.
So I could see reasons for improving the OBJ import and export above LUUV, which is very good, but I think is 85% and we could get this to be 100%.
For COLLADA, it all depends on what you want to do. COLLADA supports animation in its data, OBJ does not. There is no way to export or import an animated object with OBJ. So there is one reason to use COLLADA.
BTW, OBJ is the most universal format, so it remains useful in that respect, a handy "catch all" that will work for most every application.
So indeed it will be an addition, we won't be removing OBJ (and in fact will be looking into improving it), so everyone will have the best of both worlds :)
As for why COLLADA, well animated objects, and higher end packages, are the two main uses for it. If you have XSI, Maya, Max, are working in game development for the PS3, then COLLADA is a useful format. If you are working with Bryce or DAZ or Poser, most likely COLLADA is not such a useful format. This is a sweeping generalisation of course (and I dont know if Bryce, Poser or DAZ have COLLADA support yet, some of them might in fact) but gives the idea for where COLLADA serves its best use.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by RAYMAN // Aug 8, 2007, 6:39am
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RAYMAN
Total Posts: 1496
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So I could see reasons for improving the OBJ import and export above LUUV, which is very good, but I think is 85% and we could get this to be 100%.
Tom
This sounds like some very good news as apart from 3dm file support
I wanted a better implementation of obj. in the related thread !:) |
Post by RichLevy // Aug 8, 2007, 7:49am
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RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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No, it isn't. Obj is totaly different. Almost every app supports obj...even XSI(cause it works and is old)...I don't own(excluding tS) a single app that accepts collada, but all my apps support .obj. If I don't get my obj import/export I will be VERY dissapointed(understatement....VERY, VERY..Angry).
Other applications that take advantage of Collada:
VTour by RealViz.com
Google Earth
Sketchup
This is a potentially a very big market right there alone. (at least for me, I do lots of work in that area.
Rich |
Post by Burnart // Aug 8, 2007, 1:05pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Thanks for the info guys.
So collada supports animation - thats very interesting! Do bones set-ups come through intact or is it done via a frame-by-frame process?
Currently if I need to swap models around I use obj and luuv although sometimes strange things happen - ie. normals get swapped round on sub objects. Can be a hassle to sort some of this stuff out. Will collada be more consistent?
I'm talking what's conceivably possible here, I realise import/export in tS is not fully implemented. |
Post by RichLevy // Aug 8, 2007, 2:20pm
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RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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The bones will export out of TS just as you have them setup. Keyframes should also be ok. It will depend on the application you are bring them into.
After Caligari addresses the obj format it would be a toss up which one is better. It will depend on what you need to bring with the model. Obj leave the geometry in quads, will bring UV's and textures.
DAE will bring the geometry over, UV's, textures, shaders (DX9), bones, animations... I am not sure how much more of the spec Caligari followed. At one point they were experimenting with encapsulated objects (heirachy)...
It will depend on what you require and what the software you use needs/supports.
Rich |
Post by Burnart // Aug 9, 2007, 3:40pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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Thanks again for info. I'm actually more interested at this stage in bringing animation into tS rather than exporting so I hope collada import is implemented. But as I said earlier export and import would be more useful potentially than just one way. Not much good everyone having collada export if no-one has collada import! Having said that I note that Poser 7 Pro (recently announced) will have collada export but not import. |
Post by transient // Aug 9, 2007, 3:56pm
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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COLLADA
Poser Pro offers Data Exchange with the industry-standard COLLADA format. Gain maximum flexibility by transporting Poser content to applications such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Import: Geometry, Textures, Cameras, and Lights
Export: Geometry, Textures, Cameras, Lights, Morph targets, Bones, Shaders, Animation Data
It won't import animation data, which does seem to be the deal with most Collada capable software. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a ubiquitous file format. :confused: |
Post by Burnart // Aug 9, 2007, 8:22pm
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Burnart
Total Posts: 839
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I guess if you were able to import the bones setup and meshes etc from Poser you could always export character animation via bvh. I presume morph targets is a whole other ballgame! |
Post by moogaloonie // Aug 10, 2007, 3:39pm
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moogaloonie
Total Posts: 64
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I'm really glad to hear about Collada export, but I won't be satisfied until we get import also. Maybe it's psycholgical, but I hate it when programs can export formats they can't then read. It makes me assume that they don't expect their product to be the last tool in my chain. Also, I can see myself very soon with many programs which export Collada, and only the free one of the bunch can currently read the data back in. |
Post by jamesmc // Aug 10, 2007, 6:39pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Here's a table of various software that support Collada. tS7.5 is listed there.
http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Collada_Plugins
Gives a brief overview of how each software handles it.
From what I read the Daz Studio version also for Carrara 6 is still buggy. I haven't read anything new from Carrara though. |
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