[Bf-committers] Blender and Collada support. Does it matter?

[Knapp]

A good starting place for finding programs that use Collada.
https://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/Portal:Products_directory
I would think that testing against the Panda 3d program and Orge 3d
might be a good start if you can't find a, "standard program".

Also RDB would be a good contact at Panda 3d. He is almost always on
panda irc and he is a nice guy.
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/panda3d/+spec/native-collada-support

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In IRC devs mentioned  3dviewr.com as good collada reference. Although
> it's not official...
> I think it would be a cool target for Khronos to expand their
> conformance suite with an open source (opencollada) viewer.
>
> -Ton-
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
>
> On 19 Aug, 2011, at 13:19, Campbell Barton wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Well that was basically the whole point of my post - people are
>>>> serious about Collada, many need it, and certainly funded dev on
>>>> it must be possible. Was mostly a reaction to you saying that
>>>> funding the work wouldn't work.
>>>>
>>>> So, as said, by all means talk with Khronos, but if that route is
>>>> slow or otherwise difficult, let's not let that stop us getting
>>>> improved code earlier.
>>>>
>>>>> Juan
>>>>
>>>> ~Toni
>>>
>>> As a hobby user I am finding myself stuck because of Collada issues
>>> also. I write games with Panda 3d. Blender used to have an "egg"
>>> exporter but now it does not for the 2.5 line. Panda is switching to
>>> the Collada importer but they are also being a bit slow about it.
>>> Between all this I am stuck not being able to full do what I would
>>> like to do. My current option is exporting to X format and then
>>> converting to egg format but loosing stuff like animation.
>>>
>>> For more info into this problem area between Blender and Panda 3d:
>>> https://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11087
>>>
>>> Having a solid Blender Collada will make sure that in the future the
>>> Blender -> Panda 3d pipeline is solid. It makes me very nervous
>>> seeing
>>> all the Collada complaints and also seeing Panda3d be so slow in
>>> getting a 2.5 pipeline with Blender.
>>>
>>> So to sum it up; hobbyist need solid Collada too.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Douglas E Knapp
>>
>> Hi - note that this mail focuses mainly on export issues.
>>
>> For some reason neither GSOC projects we had so far have had exporting
>> a skinned mesh (animated character run-cycle for example), as a
>> priority.
>>
>> Apparently this works at some level but take a typical run-cycle (with
>> IK and constraints) blender and export to collada, and its a no go -
>> scrambled vertices's when I tested once a while ago, but I've heard
>> Maya's support is also not good so, it could have been a bug there.
>>
>> To me this would be one of the first things to attempt to get working
>> after basic camera, lamp, mesh support - for export at least.
>>
>> For FBX Its something I tested early on and had users help out making
>> sure it worked correctly in different applications.
>>
>> See: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.4/Py/Scripts/Export/FBX
>>
>>
>> So far I haven't spend much time with Collada but the few times I have
>> tried to troubleshoot bugs in blender support  I couldn't even find a
>> good program to view the models in - and I think this is part of the
>> problem for development - perhaps there is one and I just didn't come
>> across it - collada web viewer didn't run on my system, there was some
>> other download-able viewer that was quite old IIRC.
>>
>> - For FBX there is a demo of MotionBuilder which is a good reference
>> since they invented the format, Unity3D good for testing too.
>>
>> - For X3D I use view3dscene, h3d, freewrl sometimes whiteDune.
>>
>> But for Collada I didn't manage to find a viewer that is a defacto
>> standard for testing and properly supporting most collada's features
>> properly.
>>
>> This is really important IMHO because one can spend hours (or days),
>> troubleshooting various combinations or
>> animation/object/armature/deformation/scaled
>> objects/non-uniform-scales's/parenting.. etc - so if its the viewer at
>> fault - or its not accepted as being a correct implementation, theres
>> not much motivation to painstakingly go over the code to ensure the
>> files load properly in an external app.
>>
>> --
>> - Campbell


-- 
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