[Bf-committers] Annoucement: Better Collada Exporter for Blender!

[Juan Linietsky]

>
> Juan, i don't expect a silver bullet and i don't even believe in this. But
> 3 days ago you claimed "This plugin is very battle-tested, and files
> written by it can be read by most DCCs and engine", now you say "You can't
> write an exporter thinking that you will please every importer out there".
> This two things i can't really link together. So the questions so far:
>
>
Why not? they are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that, again, you
are expecting a silver bullet.

When I claim it works, it means they can import the files, the problem is
that Collada support in most engines and DCCs is very incomplete in
general. If you export exactly that is supported by the importer, it works.
If you export more, it generally doesn't, and the engine/DCC will crash and
burn. My Collada exporter basically tries to mimic the same exporter format
that OpenCollada Maya uses, which is why it's so compatible (as that is the
most popular plugin used).

So, if you want me to explain it in a different way, it should work as well
as the best collada exporter it exists as the moment, but at the same time
that's not necessarily good.



> - Is current blender's importer capable of importing the exported by the
> addon scene?
>

Yes, but it crashes in some scenes that use complex stuff such as
morphs+skeletons. This is a problem of Blender's importer, not the
exporter, as it exhibits the same behavior with other exporters (such as
Maya Opencollada). Animations work fine, but animation clips do not work
(which I believe are not supported anyway by the importer).


> - Which engines/software are supported with the current state of the addon?
>

Tested Unity, works with most stuff but does not support clips, materials,
etc. Unity should fix this.
I know people used it with the Amnesia engine, and with Crytek and it
worked pretty well.


> - What are the plans about extending supported 3d party apps?
>

As I said before, the collada format exported is based in OpenCollada Maya,
which is the best Collada exporter. It does not do anything weird nor
imposes another way of exporting the format. If a 3rd party app does not
work it's most likely the fault of that app, not because my exporter needs
to be more compatible.


> - What are the plans about importer?
>

None.


> - Who's gonna to maintain the code?
>

I develop and maintain the code.


> - Does someone from blender users tested the addon?
>
>
Plenty of users to export to Godot, a few other users to export to other
engines, but they have no way to know it exists unless it's integrated as
core. I already explained this well enough.


> But maybe the biggest one to be answered first: what are the benefits for
> blender from the current state of the addon?
>
>
-My exporter works, period. If you think it doesn't then I leave the burden
of proof to you, and I take responsibility to fix anything that might not.
-It supports the full Collada feature set (except physics, but no one uses
that).
-Has better export filters.
-Can export multiple actions as clips, and bakes constraints on export.
Without this exporting characters or interactive scenes is a pain in the
ass.
-It's only 1400 lines of python code.
-Developer did not abandon it, nor does plan to abandon it.