Blender plug-in

I have released the 0.03 version of my Blender exporter on sourceforge: Collada plug-in for Blender download | SourceForge.net

The exporter output .dae files according to the 1.3.1 specification.

It features export of meshes(position, uv and normal), materials with texture info, cameras and point lights. It also outputs transform and parent information through the scene element.

If you’re having questions about the script or anything other related to this please feel free to post here or on the sourceforge page.

EDIT: After some testing it seems that the script happened to use specific Blender 2.37 API calls so you need the latest version of Blender (which comes bundled with Python 2.3) if you want to use the script.

Version 0.1 is now available through the source forge project site: Collada plug-in for Blender download | SourceForge.net

Some major changes since previous version:
+ Added support for Sun and Spot light types
+ Export of linked Blender objects only (removes unnecessary texture, material and image information found in version 0.03)
+ Complete and more accurate material export
+ Option to export baked transforms
+ Option to export selected object only
+ Additional COLLADA asset information
+ Progress bar

My work next week is to provide more documentation. There will be an web-page through sourceforge for more information and help with the script.

I will also start looking into writing an importer and after that I will start working with the conformance tests and test exported files with other DCC’s. I want to finish the importer and (most of) the conformance tests before I list this Blender plug-in in the plug-in version forum. This is to ensure that the plug-in listed is fully stable with both import and export.

I hope to implement animation support with the plug-in somewhere in November. At least on the exporter side. This might happen to occur at the same time as I start looking on a Collada 1.4 plug-in.

Reports of bugs or other useful information can be posted on this thread or on the source forge page. If there are some users that actually uses this script besides myself … :wink:
…then please e-mail me about your project and let me know if you want me to work on some specific features. I would also like to know if there are any public interest in the work of an importer or if there is a bigger need for an exporter for Blender.

How do you install the plugin for blender (sorry for the naive post ;-)).

Unzip and copy the collada_export.py file into your Blender scripts directory [Blender installation directory]/.blender/scripts

Open Blender and the scripts should auto-register in the export menu. If it doesn’t (I’m going to fix this) you can manually edit the Bpymenus file.

Add line:

'COLLADA 1.3.1 (.dae)...' 237 collada_export.py 0 'Export to COLLADA (.dae) format'

into your

Export {

tab located in the file.

More documentation, homepage and additional information are coming soon (hopefully this weekend) on the sourceforge page together with fixes for the latest exporter.

Check out the project homepage at: http://colladablender.sourceforge.net

Version 0.2 is now released featuring both export and import of a COLLADA 1.3.1 document.

The importer can import everything the exporter can export. That is, meshes, materials, textures, images, cameras, lights and preserved scene hierachy.

The exporter speed has been greatly improved!! Some “serious bad coding” in the previous release has been optimized and the exporter is now up to 30-40 times faster on mesh export. Reported bugs has been fixed and the exporter is more stable.

I would like to thank Remi in this forum for sending me his blender importer work which (although I did not use any code part) helped me clarify some import issues in blender.

Features planning for next release are updated project site, more documentation and a GUI for options when exporting and importing.

I will also start looking at animation now that the new Blender Python API has been finished.

I am very happy to announce that Blender 2.4 is now out and comes bundled with the currently released 0.3 version of the COLLADA plug-in!

You will need to download Python 2.4 for the plug-in to work.

If you download the Blender COLLADA Plug-in from the sourceforge site (link above) you will get a spaceship model in .dae format. 8)

Howdy, I might have some time to help with updating this to COLLADA 1.4 spec. I wonder if some of the python for handling COLLADA format can be broken out into a module for re-use…

btw, it would be really neat to see this in verse-blender build. we ought to nag jiri. ;d

sure contact me by e-mail (contactme@mikaellagre.com) and we could talk some more. I’m currently away on personal business this week but will continue developing next week,