[Bf-committers] Collada importer/exporter kickout

[spatial]

> For the COLLADA community Blender is definitely one of the most
> important stakeholders to stop supporting COLLADA would make things in
> DCC exchange even worse.
I agree. Not to mention all those who co use it alongside LW , all of 
DAZ products....etc.

I actually tried to avoid a discussion here since a long time,
but topic is too important.

First, kicking out collada from blender doesn't help anyone. None of the 
"common" interexchange formats is that reliable / support all features. 
To have at least a second format as a backup strategy,  if a certain 
features arent't supported / have some unreliable results, is a "must 
have" in every cross application enviroment.

And btw, blenders FBX import is, from my experience, still not as 
reliable as it should be, to actually replace collada. (sorry, this is 
no actual bashing... its already great what has been archived... 
especially if you consider that it is allways pain in the ass, to 
support such a complex exchange format)

> We are currently discussing further financing of OpenCOLLADA and will
> spend more time the next months on bugfixing and conformance tests.
>
Sorry to say this, but this is one of the mayor reasons I have to post this:

Conformance tests do only help a little to 0
The big _advantage_ fbx has, is a working reference application called maya.

No conformance test can actually be that foolproof to support all 
features and variations. So by this simple unoffical agreement,"if it 
doesn't work in maya - it is broken", users and developers have an ideal 
platform to discuss errors / find workarounds.  This greatly avoids the 
"picking in the dark" situation all developers currently face with 
collada. Even if a dev doesn't have access to it, in a lot of cases, he 
can track down problems reported by users who do provide a simple 
screenshot.

Could this collada reference application be Blender ?
For me this is a very attractive idea, but also, I'm very aware of the fact,
that I'm opening a can of worms I'm actually in no way in the right 
position to touch.

Anyway just my 2 cents on this.
chris