Hi,
I’m currently looking into producing a custom (internal initially) toolset that manages the production pipeline in a small animation studio. One of the requirements imposed on this toolset is that assets can be created in any of a number of authoring tools. Assets will be managed by the tool in a common format, with custom tools written to extract information from that format into RenderMan RIB for processing by the renderfarm.
Without creating another new format, it seems the options for this ‘common’ format are quite limited, FBX jumps out. However, I have a ‘bad’ feeling about incorporating something that is so closed. I stumbled across Collada and was wondering whether anyone here has any thoughts on it’s suitability for this purpose?
It seems to me that there is a lot of ‘crossover’, shaders are similar enough that the existing Collada structures would probably be useful. Animation and different geometry types are the major initial concern.
In terms of tools, I’m thinking along the lines of a tool that can extract a given ‘frame’ from a Collada scene description, produce the required RIB and pass it onto the renderer.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Cheers
PaulG