Jwir3's Weblog

Hi Again Everyone -

Haven't posted in a while, so I thought I would give an update on how things have progressed on the COLLADA convertor. Between Mike Gist and myself, we've been able to get just about everything working. The only holdup - the surface triangulator - has been implemented, and appears to be working as expected. Currently, the surface triangulator needs some testing, though, as I've only tested it with basic models. So, if you have a chance, I'd really appreciate it if all of you folks out there with COLLADA models could give it a try. Here's what we're looking at testing:

• COLLADA Conversion of Geometry from .dae (COLLADA 1.4) to Crystal Space
• Surface Triangulation (iTriangulate3D and corresponding csTriangulate3D). This triangulation routine will NOT handle holes, but should handle any other 3D polygon of arbitrary size and planarity (i.e. either planar or non-planar polygons). I'm still working on getting it working with holes, but this isn't extremely pressing, as they are pretty rare.
• Camera and Scene conversion and proper viewing angles, etc...
• Basic material conversion (color, image texture, etc...)

The most recent addition, in terms of features, to the system is the last one - the materials. Since we're not 100% sure how we're going to handle shaders from COLLADA to CS (if at all), the materials area of the converter may be a little sparse. And, it's also somewhat volatile.

Also, we need testers on the following systems (as I don't have access to them):

• Mac OSX
• Alpha