Hello Everyone,
I am the Conformance Test Engineer at Sony working the Collada project and I am attempting to form a database of test cases for Maya, 3DSMax, and XSI, and I’m looking for people who are willing to donate data to the cause. There are two major types of data that I’m looking for: simple atomic examples that test one feature, and real-world test cases.
An example of the “Simple Atomic” data type would be a test case labled “skeletal animation” that had a simple cylinder skinned to a 2 joint arm–Just an easy little thing that demonstrates a feature.
An example of the “Real-World” data type would be a character that you’d made that you wanted to see exported. For logistical purposes, it’s better if the real-world data not be huge scenes, but more like a vehicle, a character, or a building that should be exported properly by the Collada tools.
Works submitted as part of the testing set needs to be able to be put into a public database that we can eventually post here for people to use with the conformance test. So it goes without saying that the data has to be something you are willing to share publicly with people as they test their exporters.
As someone who submits their data, you benefit by having the developers test with data that is tailored to your development process, and therefore you know that your export/import needs are being considered. In all the DCC packages there are a million ways to do any given operation and everyone has their own methods of creating (very similar) data. In the process of developing exporters and importers, it’s very easy to fall into a single pattern and be blind to all the various ways of doing things–that’s why our current state where a very small set of people make all the test cases, is a bad thing, and why a public data gathering effort is so useful. If you submit data that shows how you do things, then people will test with it, find bugs, and eventually post exporters that handle your methods (if they don’t already).