COLLADA Overview

3D Asset Exchange Schema

COLLADA™ defines an XML-based schema to make it easy to transport 3D assets between applications - enabling diverse 3D authoring and content processing tools to be combined into a production pipeline. The intermediate language provides comprehensive encoding of visual scenes including: geometry, shaders and effects, physics, animation, kinematics, and even multiple version representations of the same asset.COLLADA FX enables leading 3D authoring tools to work effectively together to create shader and effects applications and assets to be authored and packaged using OpenGL® Shading Language, Cg, CgFX, and DirectX® FX.

COLLADA Community

The Khronos Group is host to the COLLADA community wiki where users and adopters from around the world visit to ask questions and share their COLLADA knowledge and test content. There are also a growing number of open source software projects that can help you to develop your COLLADA applications more quickly:

• OpenCOLLADA hosted on Github

COLLADA enables content creation pipelines

COLLADA supports all the features that modern 3D interactive authoring applications and DCC (digital content creation) tools need to exchange and fully preserve asset data and meta data. its The COLLADA feature set is expanding to incorporate technologies such as packaging programmable shader effects and controlling real-time physics engines. COLLADA enables powerful content creation pipelines that can automatically condition and scale 3D geometry and texture assets for real-time playback on a wide diversity of platforms.

• COLLADA transports 3D assets between applications
  Enables binding of diverse DCC and 3D processing tools into a production pipeline
• COLLADA is a XML database schema for 3D assets
  COLLADA is an intermediate language - not a delivery format and not a scene graph
• COLLADA can be lossless
  Retains all information - even multiple versions of the same asset
• COLLADA has comprehensive encoding of visual scenes
  Including geometry, animation, shaders and physics
• COLLADA is an open, archive-grade format that retains meta information
  When your DCC tool upgrades, you keep your assets

What's New in COLLADA 1.5?

Core Feature Enhancements

• B-rep geometry
• Kinematics
• Asset Geolocation
• Compressed Archives (.ZAE Zipped Exchange Archive format)
• Node proxies (Level of Detail and Streaming)
• Improved XML Schema data typing and validation

COLLADA FX

• OpenGL ES 2.0 Profile
• Bridge Profile to external systems: DirectX FX and CgFX
• Improved texture binding and full screen effects

COLLADA 1.4 Features

Core Feature Enhancements

• Mesh geometry
• Skinning
• Morphing
• Animation
• Assets
• Data validation

COLLADA FX
COLLADA FX is the first cross-platform standard shader and effects definition written in XML. It targets high-end systems running OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) and Cg (HLSL coming), as well as resource-constrained systems (OpenGL ES 1.x profile). It provides:

• Next generation lighting, shading and texturing
• High level effects and shaders
• Support for all shader models (1.x, 2.0, 3.0) under CG and GLSL profiles.

COLLADA Physics

• Rigid Body Dynamics
• Rag Dolls
• Contraints
• Collision Volumes
• Enables data interchange between Havok, Bullet, ODE and other game physics middleware

COLLADA and glTF 3D Asset Formats

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