Object/group comments

Other Standards COLLADA
1

I’m using collada since 1.2.0 and I’m very content with it, but it seem to have a little gap regarding a piece of information that can be easily shared across different applications.

Almost all 3D modelling software allows to assign some text notes (sometimes called comments) to scene objects or group of objects.

It can contain valuable information and it’s format is common between various software being just a set of text strings. Sadly there is no place for it in the COLLADA specification.

It seems to be usefull to add a new <note> tag either directly to <node> or inside <extra> tag under the COMMON profile. It’s content shall be a simple set of text strings.

2

The <extra> element is the place to store notes and other meta data. The major DCC tools offer differing support for “user data”, “blind data”, etc. so for the time being COLLADA supports that generically based on technique. That is why the <extra> element is a bag of techniques.


<node>
  <extra>
    <technique profile="XSI">
      <param name="note" type="string"> my notes </param>
    </technique>
  </extra>
</node>