.DAE - About Collada 3D Model Format

Introduction to 3D Model Collada (DAE)

COLLADA is a royalty-free XML schema that enables digital asset exchange within the interactive 3D industry. 

In other words COLLADA defines an XML Namespace and database schema to make it easy to transport 3D assets between applications without loss of information, enabling diverse 3D authoring and processing tools to be combined into a content production pipeline.

COLLADA enables powerful content creation pipelines that can automatically condition and scale 3D geometry and texture assets for real-time playback on a wide diversity of platforms.

• COLLADA transports 3D assets between applications that enables binding of diverse DCC and 3D processing tools into a production pipeline.

• COLLADA is a XML database schema for 3D assets.

• COLLADA can be loss-less: Retains all information - even multiple versions of the same asset.

• COLLADA has comprehensive encoding of visual scenes: Including geometry, animation, shaders and physics.

• COLLADA is an open, archive-grade format that retains meta information.

COLLADA Open Source Software: There are following options available:-

• COLLADA Refinery and coherency checker: please use this tool to check if your exported COLLADA documents are valid. 

• COLLADAMax and COLLADAMaya: COLLADAMax and COLLADAMaya are new implementations of 3ds Max or Maya plug-ins to export scenes or parts of them to a COLLADA file, released under an MIT-license. 

For more details refer to https://collada.org/