Definitive answer, anyone?

I am a professional Softimage user of 16 years who has an interest in and dabbles with Blender. Currently we still have no straightforward or reliable way to get data from Softimage into Blender.

Collada files I export from Softimage import into Blender with all elements (cameras, geometry, lights) present and correct; however the animation, while present, is orphaned in the Blender scene. I can manually ‘fix’ the Collada file to be something acceptable to Blender, but it’s a major chore to say the least.

I have raised this issue in the past and was told that it was the Softimage export implementation at fault, however the Softimage developers believe it to be an issue with the Blender importer.

Despite occasional repeated nudging on various Blender forums this is still the case and my queries seem to fall on deaf ears, so I decided to ask here and see if anyone would like to offer a definitive answer.

Thomas Volkmann’s original Blender bug report can be found here:

I can summarize with these snippets from the two threads:
Blender Dev -
The collada-output generated by softimage seems to violate the Collada 1.4.1 specifications.
According to the collada specifications - collada_spec_1_4.pdf (see page 3-7) :
The common <param> (core) name attribute for animation translations may contain a <param> with name=“X|Y|Z” wich specify the 3 cartesian coordinates.

Blender uses name=“X|Y|Z” according to the specifications…Softimage uses name=“VALUE” for all 3 coordinates…thus the most important information (which coordinate shall we use) has been corrupted.

Softimage Dev -
If Blender only supports name=“X|Y|Z”, then it might be their(or OpenCollada’s) limitation.
For <sampler> elements in COLLADA, you can see from the specs page 136, the param name should not matter.
The X and Y values should be processed from the INPUT and OUTPUT semantics rather than whatever the name attribute is.

It’s my understanding that the Softimage Collada exporter is part of the Crosswalk suite of interchange tools common to all Autodesk products, so I’d like to assume they have a point.

Anyone care to offer up an opinion?

Many thanks,

Dan Yargici