[Opensim-users] Collada

[Dzonatas]

Toni Alatalo wrote:
> Is this supposing a custom OpenSim/SL version of the format used for the 
> DAE, or did the processor already convert the parametric models 
> ('prims') to something that the existing importer & exporter would 
> support? I guess not, and that you are assuming custom support for e.g. 
> the Blender tools. Which would be perfectly ok of course, support for 
> this can't come from out of nowhere anyway, the effort must be done 
> somewhere.
>   

It would be part of the collada pipeline to condition a file as needed, 
see here:

http://www.collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/Portal:Conditioners_directory

I'd imagine you wonder about how to go from a mesh to a parametric model 
(if the external application doesn't support all the parametric data).

Blender could be extended to support the same parametric data that is 
used in SL/opensim. http://www.google.com/search?q=blender+parametric

Here was a start on collada plug-in for blender: 
http://colladablender.illusoft.com/cms/

There is more support out there for sculpties format then parametric 
data. That would because there is a more general algorithm for scuplties 
but parametric data requires specific knowns to work correctly. These 
knowns would have to be distributed with the DAE file somehow.

For example, maybe include a script in the DAE file that generates the 
mesh from the parametric data. The applications collada plug-in could 
run the script any time the parametric data is modified to regenerate 
the model. This is not too different of an idea from being able to store 
shaders in the DAE file, which exists now.