Collada is a big fat turd

Coding
1

Excuse the language, but I just have to vent.

With all the work that has been put into fancy-ass collada features over the years (supports deformers! supports driven key controllers! Nurbs! etc), my success rate for importing the most boring kinds of collada files with either the FBX_DAE option or using the Khronos openCollada importer is incredibly low. FBX can’t handle the materials so it loses the textures (on materials which are supposed to be plain-vanilla Lamberts. OpenCollade imports them - but it sets them all to completely transparent.

… and I’ll let this piece of code speak for itself:

 try:
        cmds.file( dae_file, i=True, type="OpenCOLLADA importer", ra=True, rdn=True, namespace="dae", options="importUnits=1;importNormals=1;" )
        # importing using the command without the Khronos dialog option always fails 
       # with " lightList ':lightList1' has no 'ln[0]' attribute."
    except:
        pass
    try:
        cmds.file( dae_file.replace( ".dae", ".ma" ), i=True, namespace='incompetent_morons' )
        # so we import the temporary MA file that the lazy-ass collada importer created.
        #  .. and ignore the error too.  Good thing we don't want lights!
    except:
        pass
    finally:
        os.remove(dae_file.replace( ".dae", ".ma" ))
       # because of course when you import a file you want extra crap on your hard drive

Excuse me, I need to go poke needles into my eyes.

2

Welcome to Tech Art!

3

It’s funny, this may the reason we all have jobs.

4

I vote we have a ColladaDay, the Tird of the Tird.

I feel your pain, we had to cut our own branch and add the features that we needed.

~B)

5

[QUOTE=Butters;20461]I vote we have a ColladaDay, the Tird of the Tird.

I feel your pain, we had to cut our own branch and add the features that we needed.

~B)[/QUOTE]

To play devil’s advocate, at least COLLADA provides the access one would need to cut a custom branch (cough…FBX…cough).

6

Alembic is starting to get some traction in the film industry. While its not as robust as FBX claims to be, being a transport format of baked data, it might suit your needs. And its open source like collada. Check out the “What is Alembic” section and see if it claims to do what you need.
http://www.alembic.io/index.html

7

[QUOTE=eevans;20464] (cough…FBX…cough).[/QUOTE]

LOL