What is a collada file?

Sorry if this is a dumb/obvious question! I’m trying to make an classic-style adventure game for fun and I want to have 3D characters in it. The game-making software I’m using for this is very new and has no tutorials available for putting 3D characters in the game. Problem is, I know absolutely nothing about creating/using 3D characters, so I’m trying to stumble through myself and figure it out.

The program accepts 3D model files in the form of .dae or .x. So I loaded in a .dae file I found online.

It also has a drop-down for 3D animation, but for some reason this drop-down is unfortunately blank.

So that brings me to the question–what exactly is a collada file? Is it just a 3D model? Is it a 3D model that is animated? Is it a bunch of separate animations performed by a 3D model?

I’m so confused.

In my ideal world, a collada file would be a bunch of separate animations–so I could have one animation for talking, one for walking, etc, that i could load into my game. But I have no idea if that’s what it actually is.

Can someone shed some light on all of this?