Im using the new ColladaMax exporter from Feeling software. Upon converting a test model to my engine format and loading it, i got a very wrong looking model. Knowing that i had coded the converter assuming alot of things and being very new to Collada, i expected that this new exporter was probably doing something more standard compliant which the previous exporter overlooked. I looked through my converter code multiple times, but did’nt find anything. Finally i compared 2 dae files exported from both the old and new exporters. The difference was in the indices. The new exporter not only made use of wrong normals, it also produced index data which was hardly optimisable. My converter produced model files 3-4 times larger with the new exporter.
Finally i just imported the dae file into Max and realised that it gave the same incorrect looking normals. My mesh had 3 materials applied to different parts of the mesh. For meshes with only 1 material, this problem didnt seem to occur.