Greetings Collada Community!

Other Standards COLLADA
1

Greetings and salutations to the entire Collada Community.

I am a total nube with this whole Collada thing and its been about 15 years since I’ve programmed in C++. Yeah, I’m an old Unix Dinosaur … (where’s the makefile ? :lol: )

I’m just getting started and my first task is to write a converter from Collada to Touch.

If anyone can provide me with some ultra simple code how to use Collada to read in a simple model file I would greatly appreciate it. Or maybe you could suggest the best way to get started hitting the ground running.

Thanks for all the support out there.

Cheers! :smiley:

2

Did you read the information on the front page of collada.org ?
You will find a link to the guetting started guide, where you will find a section about programming. You should check out the COLLADA-DOM and the FCOLLADA libraries if you want to do C++. Refer the the contribution forum for other languages. For instance, you many want to use C# to create a tool. You can get some sample code here for XNA for instance. (so you can learn about C#, COLLADA and create your tool all at the same time, what a time saver !)

3

I’ve started myself recently, and I had to download several packages just to get the viewer
compiled and working.

Just to compile the RT viewer, I had to download:

  1. COLLADA_DOM
  2. COLLADA_FX
  3. COLLADA_RT
  4. External Libraries (iconv,libxml2,devil,zlib)
  5. CG Toolkit 1.5

And you absolutely need Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Had some minor compilation issues,
but I finally got it all compiled and working. Whew!

4

These are all great places to start guys - Thank you very much.

I’ll start with both approaches to get going.

You guys Rock :smiley:

5

Thanks for the help guys!

I was able to get the Rt_ Viewer compiled, linked and running, I think.

I have to say, “I think” because my output is still questionable.

I tried the cube and the duck Collada files. The objects open up but it looks as if their vertex order is backwards or their surface normals are pointed in the wrong direction. I don’t know if this is a problem with my video card or I’m still doing something wrong.

Also, are there any instructions on using the RT_Viewer? When I start the program from the command line, I really have to hunt to see the object. IS there some kind of camera snap key? I know some of these files have cameras but I have no idea how to set them up.

Thanks for getting me this far everyone. Your patience is awesome!

Cheers! :smiley:

6

From my first experience with it, I’ve found the RT viewer to be very basic.

I’m sure there are a lot of .dae files it won’t load correctly. Support for
skinned meshes and animation is very basic (the code makes a lot assumptions).
Some of my models come in twisted and distorted.

In other words, I would not trust the RT viewer to properly display
a .dae file exported from apps like 3dsmax, maya, and xsi. I would only use
it for the most basic files: no skins, no animations, just geometry.