Scripting ideas???

#1 An exporter for COLLADA format would be great.

#2 Very nice, could you talk about what specific features that would provide, for the people who don't know what COLLADA is, and to get the conversation going. I believe this is something that really needs to be addressed so as a community we can come up with things that everyone can benefit from. Seeing how this is going to be a free tool, which still kinda blows my mind, there are a lot of people that are going to benefit from things like this. I'm really wondering what kind of shader support there is. Thanks for the reply!!

#3 COLLADA is an initiative to create a true universal 3D object format. The plan is for the format to be native in all future 3D modeling tools and it is based upon XML. The specifications include considerations for skeletons, animations, physics, and more. All the major 3D modeling tools have COLLADA projects in the works. So the idea is that in the future there will no longer be the need for exporters and importers as long as the product supports the COLLADA format.

The standardization of this format is basically following the business world's information technology (IT) trend that happened many years ago with success.

The specification was initially created by Sony for their new gaming standards and they gave the specification to public via a group called Khronos. Khronos has since extended the specification to add new features. Here are the links:


http://www.khronos.org/files/collada_spec_1_4.pdf
http://www.collada.org/

#4 Ah, also another note. The Google 3D warehouse uses SketchUp program which its save format is COLLADA. If we had an importer for COLLADA it would open up a huge world of object in the 3D Warehouse.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

#5 Interesting

#6 Greetings!

I just wanted to point out that with version 1.0 there is no plug-in interface for importers or exporters, only tools. This doesn't mean that some creative individual couldn't build one -- perhaps as a Dialog type tool. It just is more difficult than if the actual interface existed.

And a note on importers: unless the geometry is coming from another CSG-based tool there is a lot of work to be done to generate valid brushes. SketchUp isn't specifically a CSG-based modeler, is it?

For exporters this isn't an issue however, as seen with the included LWO exporter.

- LightWave Dave

#7 Thumbs up for the collada export/import integration.

#8 I've written a couple of script routines for handling texture management, door locations (so you don't have to place them by hand), and TGEA material definition generation (this was a big deal for me, since a .diff containing 50 textures meant writing 50 material definitions).

I'm working on writing some more plug-ins, and will be compiling everything I have into one resource soon.

#9 Sounds good Mike, can't wait, keep up the good work!!:)

#10 Great initiative Michael, thank you in advance.